


The One Time Pepper Gave Bad Relationship Advice (and Natasha's A Scary-Ass Motherfucker)

by AngeNoir



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Badass Natasha, Light BDSM, M/M, Tony Feels, gross abuse of adverbs, past abusive relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-31
Updated: 2012-09-23
Packaged: 2017-11-13 09:01:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 27,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/501758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngeNoir/pseuds/AngeNoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the story of Clint. And Tony. And Clint and Tony. And it all started out because of Natasha.</p><p>(That's Tony's story and he's sticking to it.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heeroluva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heeroluva/gifts).



> I'M SO SORRY. I don't think this is what you meant/wanted, but this is where my brain went. ;_;
> 
> General disclaimer: I do not own any of the Marvel characters. Based off of this prompt:
> 
>  
> 
> _Clint's not good with relationships outside of work. He can play the part when a mission calls for it, but he buried his heart deep a long time ago. Tony can never pass up a challenge. Natasha gives Tony a piece of her mind. Is Tony in it just for a good fuck or does he want something more? Will Clint believe him if he does?_
> 
>  
> 
> UPDATED 09/04/2012.

Tony turned the corner and near about jumped a foot out of his skin when Natasha appeared out of nowhere, eyes narrowed and posture intimidating. That was a little disconcerting, honestly, considering the fact that he was actually taller than her (and, okay yeah, he was taller than Clint and Bruce both, by an inch or two, but Thor and Steve made him feel like an ant and reminded him too often of standing in the shadow of someone bigger and older and whoa, let’s focus on those Widow’s bites by his face now) and he blinked at her furious gaze.

“I don’t think I’ve done anything stupid recently,” he said slowly, only just realizing that it was mid-afternoon and he knew it had been early evening when he went down to the floor that held his workshop, which meant he’d stayed longer than he meant to. Maybe there had been a meeting? Nope, no meeting, Steve or Bruce were normally good about tugging him away from his work and forcing him to actually sit down on whatever fucking conference call Fury demanded this time. So, not meeting. Some team-bonding-crap that had been planned?

Only no, Steve and Thor were both the ones the planning was for, and, again, the two who would come down and pry him out even though he really disliked acting the tourist.

Their last battle had been a week ago; unlikely she was still mad about dunking her in the Hudson, especially considering the fact that she’d already broken into his room and left a very creative and threatening message on his pillows, bathroom mirror, and the back of his closet. Scared the _shit_ out of him.

So, all in all, no reason for this confrontation in the hallway with no witnesses and Tony couldn’t help but flash back to her stabbing him in the neck when Natasha had been Natalie and unassuming and a serpent in the grass.

“What happened last night?” she demanded, voice hard and promising pain. Lots and lots of pain.

Tony, not liking pain, tried to think it over and hazarded, “I… stayed in my workshop?”

“Clint stayed with you the whole night.”

That seemed like an odd thing to say, but now that he thought back to it – he was really tired, and apparently that didn’t allow for things like quick recall – he could remember Clint’s voice, jokes and banter, quick fingers and light touches across the shoulders or back of the neck. “Ye-es?” he said, drawing the word into two syllables.

“I want to know what’s going on between you and Clint,” she responded, voice low and flat and he blinked at her, trying to figure out where this was coming from.

After Thor had left with the tesseract and Loki, Tony had driven Bruce to the airport, giving him a roll of cash, outfitting him with a bunch of stuff that Pepper had rustled up from the nearest hiking store or whatever it was that would put together backpacks to allow you to rough it, and gone back to his empty tower. At that point, he and Pepper had still been dating, though it was really tense for some reason – Tony assumed it was because he’d nearly died on national television again or something along those lines. Pepper had never said, and their moments together had been quiet and subdued and that, coupled with the quiet and generally broken atmosphere of the tower, had led to more drinking and more work and one day he’d stumbled out of a board meeting and decided he was going to walk over to the nearest Dunkin Donuts and buy himself a dozen iced donuts for the hell of it. Funnily enough, he’d run into Steve on the sidewalk and commenced an awkward conversation that had ended up with him blurting out to Steve an invitation to move into the tower.

Steve had given him a long, careful look (this had been back when Tony was still calling Steve by his last name, and Steve was doing the same) and pointed out he had an apartment.

Tony backtracked immediately, ended the conversation, and then three days later JARVIS was informing him that Steve, Clint, and Natasha were waiting in the lobby to be brought up to the living quarters at the top of the tower. And they had just… stayed. Had poked at his door until JARVIS prodded him out of his engineering to notice them, had shanghaied him into going to Coney Island, the Statue of Liberty, Times Square, anywhere and everywhere (and then, later when Thor visited, dragged him through that particular hell again), and Tony had gotten used to them being around. Pepper had been frustrated, a little, that it wasn’t just them, but at the time Tony was in the midst of completing product contracts anyway and she was always jetting around the world to the various Stark Industries bases, making sure everything was up to snuff the way a good CEO did. And when she’d come back, and had a discussion about how she had to watch him fall into the Atlantic because he’d flown ahead of the Quinjet and the bad guy had had an EMP, it was the worst moment of her life, and she couldn’t keep watching him almost die, not as her boyfriend. She needed space, needed objectivity, needed to know he wasn’t killing himself on her watch, needed to know he wasn’t drinking himself insensate on her watch, needed to end the rumors and the gossip and paparazzi, needed to be her own person not in his shadow.

That night, he and Clint had gotten absolutely _trashed_.

Or, to be stringently honest, Tony had proceeded to locate every bottle of vodka and tequila he could find and made an honest effort to drink each one dry. Clint had come back from wherever he’d been and found Tony slumped in the kitchen with one bottle of tequila empty, a bare mouthful of vodka left in another bottle, and another bottle of vodka in Tony’s shaking, clumsy hands.

And Clint had sat down next to him and proceeded to talk Tony into playing “Never Have I Ever” until Steve and Natasha heard them laughing uproariously in the kitchen and took them back to their respective rooms and poured them into their beds.

It was only a few days later that Thor reappeared, looking very solemn and depressed because of his brother but otherwise just as loud and boisterous as Tony had expected him to be. There were times when he would sit down and earnestly engage in debates with Steve about the value and virtue of monarchies versus democracies, and he and Tony would discuss technology because, apparently, technology really was no different than magic, just done a different way, and Thor’s examples always helped Tony see things from a new angle and while Thor couldn’t keep up with the terminology and minute details, Tony enjoyed discussing engineering concepts on a basic level. A week later, and Bruce was suddenly in the lobby, dusty and tired and missing a few pounds but happy, alive, and grinning that shy grin that hid the edge of wicked mischievousness that Tony fully approved of.

They had been a family, of a sorts, and they didn’t quite fit together and they rubbed each other raw sometimes and there were moments when they very nearly took one another apart through words or blows or vicious silence, but all in all, they were learning to fit together. And while Tony adored Bruce, loved his discussions with Thor, enjoyed educating Steve, and even bantered with Natasha, ever since that Never Have I Ever game he’d been Clint’s drinking buddy, pranking buddy, competitor, and all around best friend.

But that happened a _long_ time ago. Like… at least two months. Maybe even three. That was _long_. Why was Natasha bothering him about that right now?

“Clint always hangs in the workshop when he can’t sleep,” he finally said when there was nothing more forthcoming from Natasha and no one appeared to save him from the crazy woman with a taser directed at his eyeballs. “I… see him as a friend? We compete in MarioCart? He likes Wii bowling and I prefer Wii dancing? I need something more to go on, Nats, you – ah, ah, okay, close to my eyes, what the hell, Natasha, I don’t get it at all, I don’t understand what the point of this is or what you want me to say!”

She leaned forward, eyes slits, and Tony absolutely did not doubt that she was one of SHIELD’s top assassins in that moment. “You and Clint. You’ve been going on _dates_.”

“What?” Tony asked, completely baffled, reviewing past interactions with Clint. And, okay, he’d taken Clint to a soccer game that one time, and Clint had invited him to a basketball game, and they’d gone out to the bar and had a few rounds, playing pool because Clint was just as deadly there as he was with an arrow but pool was about angles and degrees which Tony rocked at, so he’d managed to hold his own quite well (the less said about the impromptu dart contest, the better) and okay, yeah, he and Clint were tactile, but Tony was a tactile person and so was Clint and the rest of the team _weren’t_ , so it made sense that Tony would drape an arm around Clint’s shoulders or ruffle Clint’s hair and it made sense that Clint would poke Tony in the arm or tweak his nose or bump shoulders and holy hell, he was dating Clint, wasn’t he?

“Look, I mean, I like hanging out with Clint and shit, and yeah, he’s very attractive in that he can kill me without thinking and he’s as narcissistic as I am, and I would like to say that for the record I am not averse to dating him, not at all, but realistically speaking I thought he was _your_ on and off boyfriend and I don’t poach, not when it’s a girlfriend of my guy friend or the boyfriend of my woman friend. Okay? Is that what this is about?”

“I think you forget, Tony Stark,” Natasha snarls, and yes, _snarls_ is appropriate and holy hell what could Tony have done to earn this level of animosity, really? – “I worked at Stark Industries and I know your phases of ‘see it, want it, use it, leave it’ and I would just like to inform you now that I don’t care what you like or what you don’t, you _do not touch Clint_. Are we fucking clear?”

Well, then. Tony narrowed his eyes right back at her, spine stiffening because _no_ , thank you, he wasn’t as shallow as the media made him out to be and so what if it hurt a little that Natasha could still think so even after living him with three or four months. “I think,” he said, voice low and pointed and dismissive because he wasn’t going to dignify her question with an answer, “if you want this – whatever it is, whatever it might turn out to be, whatever direction it might go – if you want it to stop, you better go tell Clint this first. As cute as you are when you’re angry, I’m not going to drop something because _you_ tell me to do so. If he wants me to, well, that’s a different story.”

There was a noise – fucking _finally_ , someone needed the communal kitchen and was walking down the hallway. She glanced towards the footsteps, then back at Tony.

“You are not good enough for him. You _never will be_.”

With that, she took two steps back, the Widow’s bite suddenly disappearing from her wrist, just as Steve turned the corner and stopped to look at them.

“Oh,” he said, smiling easily. “Dragged Tony from his lab, Natasha? Good, I was just about to send Bruce down there. Tonight’s board game night, remember?”

The corner of Natasha’s mouth quirked up while her eyes seemed to mock Tony, daring him to say anything. Tony swallowed hard and mustered up a grin himself. “Yeah, yeah, sure Steve. I remember.”

 

*

 

See, the thing was, once the idea was planted in his mind, well, it took _root_.

 

*

 

“Hypothetically speaking—”

“Fury says I’m supposed to leave the room and inform either Natasha or Coulson or himself if that phrase ever comes from your mouth in my presence,” Clint interjected.

Tony raised an eyebrow. “Is that supposed to prevent something from happening or to inform people there’ll be a clean-up situation soon?”

Perched on one of the many work tables in the shop, half leaning on Dum-E’s arm, Clint smirked. “No idea. Just thought I’d let you know it’s a standing order. Maybe it’s to let them prepare for the worst or something.”

“Yeah, okay, well, hypothetically speaking—”

“Is this about the muffins?”

“I _knew_ that was you!” Tony shouted, jumping up from his seat in front of the electrical wire mess he was trying to sort out and pointing an accusing screwdriver at Clint. “’Fess up, who helped you?”

Clint scratched the back of his neck with a random pointy metal object – it wasn’t a screwdriver, maybe a screw? – and his smirk turned into a cocky smile. “Not saying I did it, but if I did, do you really think I’d need someone else’s help?”

About to launch into a furious rant against Clint’s prank, Tony paused and returned to the mess of wires, trying to find the faulty coupling. “Point,” he admitted grudgingly, and then remembered his initial beginning. “Okay, no, no distracting me, hypothetically speaking, what do you look for in a date?”

There was silence on Clint’s part, and so Tony looked up to see him frowning in Dum-E’s direction. After a few more moments, Clint looked up and smiled crookedly, but his eyes were dark. “Hypothetically speaking, why would this hypothetical date-scouting take place?”

Old hurts were in Clint’s eyes, and Tony knew that Clint had been an assassin – still worked in that capacity, as well as consultant and agent and whatever the hell SHIELD decided Clint should do depending on the day of the week – but dating seemed fairly innocuous. Worried, and feeling protective, Tony weighed the pros and cons of backing off.

After all, on the one hand Clint was insanely fun to be around, and sleeping with him would just be a bonus, something casual and easy for the both of them when they had no one. And Natasha had turned Clint into someone Tony thought about occasionally to someone that he seriously considered an option and made plans to seduce. __

Then again, that morning he’d woken up to see a small effigy of himself hanging in the shower. It made him paranoid enough that Natasha could break into his room without alerting JARVIS that he’d considered removing Natasha’s free pass from the security system.

“I mean, if, hypothetically speaking, someone deadly decides to pin one person’s balls to the wall because they’ve been dating another person, except – hypothetically – they didn’t realize the other person saw them in that capacity until the moment their balls were painfully crushed, I was just wondering whether the other person – again, hypothetically – knew they were dates and if the ball-less person was just too dull-witted to notice.”

Clint laughed helplessly at that, shaking his head. “I can talk to Natasha, tell her to back off. I just saw it as us having a good time, not really dates.”

“Aha!” Tony crowed, abandoning the hypothetical since Clint had done so first. “Not really dates means they _could_ have been dates! So, did they equal dates for you? Should I start bringing you home flowers, chocolates? Fast cars? New arrowheads? Well, you’d get the arrowheads anyway. Should I expect a protective Fury threatening to break my legs if I break your heart? Will Natasha be my sister-in-law? Because, you know what, I think that might be a deal-breaker for me. I don’t know if I can handle your extended family. And I don’t think they approve of me. Star-crossed lovers never work out. But should I be trying to make this work out?”

Snickering, Clint dropped his head low and leaned against Dum-E, shoulders shaking. “I – you know, I haven’t ever gotten flowers or chocolates, so I wouldn’t expect that in any case. But no, I hadn’t been trying to make this work and you don’t have to try and make this work either.”

Tony paused, because as much as people said he didn’t listen or pay attention he really _did_ – he just forgot it if it wasn’t immediately important. “I don’t have to try, no,” he said slowly, feeling his way through his response. “But – look, until it was pointed out to me that we’ve been on a bunch of things that other people would see as dates, I didn’t think about them being dates. That doesn’t mean I haven’t noticed how smoking hot you are – fuck, how scorching _all_ our teammates are, smug fuckers. I mean, I’m completely secure that I’m absolutely handsome and need no enhancements, but when I’m bracketed by Thor and Steve, well, they’ve got some damn fine asses. That’s not counting Natasha’s and your ass, you know, and Pepper gives me weekly PowerPoint lectures on what sexual harassment is and why I shouldn’t say certain things to Bruce or Steve and why I definitely shouldn’t say those things to you, Thor, and Natasha.”

Clint looked mildly horrified and surprised, and said hesitantly, “Why ‘definitely shouldn’t’ to me, Thor, and Nats but just ‘shouldn’t’ to Bruce or Steve?”

“Because Steve and Bruce are too shy to kick my ass but you and Natasha will put me in the ground and Thor might take offense and throw me because I don’t know Asgardian customs and shouldn’t risk it,” Tony recited promptly by rote.

Clint chuckled and rubbed the back of his neck, ignoring as Dum-E plucked at his shirt. “Memorized that, huh?”

“Every word. She regularly quizzes me on it. She tells me that Stark Industries can’t handle the sexual harassment suit Fury or Hill or Coulson will throw at me if I harass any of you. Well, we could, but our stock will go down and the stocks already suffer every time Iron Man is knocked down or Iron Man blows something up, and the less I add to that the better.” Tony hefted the electrical tape and eyed the contraption before him, trying to figure out what he had actually intended to make and what it had turned into.

“That sounds memorized, too,” Clint muttered, and his voice was tense, uncertain.

Tony sighed. “I’m not saying you _have_ to date me if we’re best bros or whatever. I’m saying that you’re fucking hot, and if you had been hanging around me because you _wanted_ to be dating me you kinda have to be less subtle and more hitting-me-over-the-head-with-your-intentions.”

Clint hummed, but didn’t reply, and Tony felt a bit upset about being shut down like that, because seriously, Tony was a damn fine catch and yeah, Clint could have his pick of any groupie and, shit, apparently had had an intimate relationship with Natasha before so he obviously swung both ways…

Burying himself in the engineering, he hitched a shoulder. It wasn’t as if he just _expected_ Clint to fall into bed with him, but if he thought about it, someone who hung around with him that much normally was someone who wanted to drop into bed eventually and Clint was someone he could genuinely see himself having fun with, someone who was on his level and would get the whole idea of ‘no strings attached sex’ without being bitchy once it ended like a the reporters, models, and random staff and employees who managed to sneak past Pepper for at least one night.

It was just… Natasha had put the idea in his head, and he could _see_ himself with Clint in a way that he had only ever saw himself with Pepper.

-

“Would a relationship mess up our working relationship?”

Tony blinked at Clint over his cup of coffee, vaguely aware that it was early morning and Clint was still there. “Um. No? I don’t want to mess up our team. I mean, how would you think it would mess things up?” His voice was a little slurred, mostly because it was crazy-late and Tony was just now noticing that.

Clint tapped fingers against the metal arm of Dum-E and asked, “Would this be long-term?”

“Uh. If you want it to be? I dunno, my longest long-term was less than six months, and you know it. I kinda suck at long-term relationships.” He should start packing things in, go collapse on his bed and try to get some kind of sleep – he had that Japan trip tomorrow. Today. Later today. Whatever.

“No strings attached?”

“I hadn’t thought there would be,” Tony replied absently, closing up the open operations and setting it to stay in hibernation until he returned later.

“Maybe it could work. Sex is sex, after all?”

It sounded like Clint was trying to convince himself more than anyone else, and Tony looked up, eyes heavy and blinking wearily at Clint, who didn’t look as tired as Tony felt he should look. “I don’t want – look, I don’t want to make you do something you don’t _want_. I just wanted you to know that, if you were angling in that direction, I’m more than amenable. Okay?”

Clint pushed off from where he’d been sitting, clapping a hand on Tony’s shoulder. “Okay.”

 

*

 

It was as awkward as hell, starting out.

Part of the reason was that they were both, now, overly conscious of hanging out. There was an undercurrent of expectation on Tony’s part coupled with an undercurrent of tension and, apparently, fear.

Oh, Clint wouldn’t say that he was afraid, if asked. In fact, he’d insist he was fine just to be contrary and would get quiet and dangerous and, frankly, scary. But Tony was a master at recognizing fear, weakness, and uncertainty in the board room – that carried over to interpersonal relationships. As much as everyone claimed that he had no idea how to act with other people, that he pushed things too far, that he didn’t notice when his words had effects on the people around him, that he couldn’t interpret people’s emotional state and always said the wrong thing, he was actually pretty sharp when it came to figuring out people.

Okay, that was kinda untrue. When they were dealing with tricky emotions that Tony didn’t handle well himself, like grief or sadness, he had difficulty knowing what to say and what not to say to make them feel better. But in general, he had a pretty good grasp of the environment around him – he just didn’t care, most of the time, to make an effort to pander to it. After all, he was Tony fucking Stark, and he was a diva and an eccentric billionaire genius and a playboy _and_ a fucking philanthropist and he didn’t have to pay attention to small things if he didn’t want to.

(Steve was slowly breaking him of that mentality, but Tony was resisting as much as was possible, considering. He didn’t want to lose his reputation, after all.)

So, Tony didn’t know how to get around Clint’s fear because he didn’t know what the fear was _about_ , really. He was worried that it was something to do with Tony himself. After all, he’d had Natasha come up to him _again_ at _night_ right after he was coming out of the _shower_ and holy _hell_ he had a fucking heart condition people, you don’t get to scare the old dude who bankrolls you unless you’re a hot young wife looking for the inheritance money! But not just Natasha – he’d had Steve try and say delicately that this shouldn’t affect their teamwork at all and that Clint was an important member of the team and they all needed to be on top of their game, and generally speaking made some veiled comments about how it wasn’t good to play with other people’s emotions. Whether Bruce and Thor had opinions one way or another, Tony didn't know, but he was kinda glad he didn't have to find out. Natasha was scary enough for the both of them.

That didn’t even take into account the meeting he’d been called into by Coulson, where Coulson had proceeded to scare the shit out of Tony by virtue of doing nothing but explaining what Tony’s bedroom looked like last night, what Tony’s exact routine had been last night, and how it would be a shame for Tony to wake up missing a specific organ.

There was just something wrong about one dude threatening another dude’s dick. Like, didn’t they know how much that would _hurt_?

And Pepper, Pepper had shanghaied him into a conference room for _three fucking hours_ going over the sexual harassment PowerPoint again and again while asking him how he could have possibly forgotten the rules she had laid out for him, did he do this just to harm the company, really Tony, you’re supposed to be older than this, smarter than this?

(Even Happy had mentioned how he liked Clint and it would be a shame to see Clint upset like some of Tony’s other casual flings.)

That wasn't even counting the latest mission, in which Tony had pretty much been batted around like a ping pong ball, or the fact that the Stark Industries' board members demanded on almost a daily basis that Tony either step down from the company entirely or step away from the Avengers.

All in all, Tony was quite honestly tired and avoiding Steve and Coulson like the plague (he'd say he was avoiding Natasha, and he was trying, but she always seemed to find him) and it was just made that much worse because even though Clint had _said_ he’d be interested in trying out dates with Tony it looked like he had just been joking because they were doing absolutely _nothing_ different from before, just a confirmation to the team that yeah, they were actually going to try this (hence Pepper's lectures on sexual harassment suits, Steve's awkward and fumbling attempts to determine whether this would affect their team relationship, and Coulson's glower).

So when they stumbled out of the most recent gala, high on dancing and drinking and the crowd because they really were both crowd pleasers and enjoyed showing off to each other and people around, and Clint turned to Tony and Tony stared into wide eyes laughing, Tony leaned in close and let his nose brush against Clint’s.

Clint blinked, eyes blown from the endorphins, and laughed a little. “What was that?” he asked.

“A kiss, nose to nose,” Tony responded, voice just as light, barely noticing when Happy pulled the car to the curb. They stood there, chests pressed against each other, before Clint let out a short sigh. He was tense, nervous, but not tightly wound like he’d been the whole week, and Tony took that as a positive sign.

“Right, well, what about a real kiss?” Clint asked.

Tony took half a step back, because the tone was too challenging – Clint was defensive, not anticipatory. “I can wait,” he said instead, keeping his voice nonjudgmental and easy.

Clint gave him a weird look. “Wait?”

“I mean, yeah, I’m not pressuring you at all, you got that? We go your way or not at all, everything’s cool,” Tony tried to keep from over-elaborating but it really didn’t work out well when your first and quickest defense was sarcasm and word vomit.

With a frustrated huff, Clint leaned forward and slotted his mouth over Tony’s, eyes open and almost defiant, hands clutching at Tony’s shoulders. It seemed like a battle flag being planted, so Tony leaned back a little more, making Clint have to grip at him to keep Tony upright, and then Tony brought one hand to Clint’s neck, fingers soft and gentle even as his other hand fell to Clint’s hip, thumb rubbing soothing circles against Clint’s hip.

It wasn’t the best of kisses, but it wasn’t the worst, and by leaning back Tony felt he successfully distracted Clint from worrying about the intimacy by making him worry about whether Tony was going to fall over or not. When it ended, Clint blinked down into Tony’s face, a light flush dusting the tops of his cheeks and shaking a bit. Tony let a slow, lazy smile spread over his face.

“We can do more of that in the car, you know,” he purred, and was thrilled to see the blush trickle down Clint’s neck and bloom at the tops of Clint’s ears. He determinedly did _not_ think about how far down that blush went (okay, that was a lie, he did, but he tried to wipe his mind of the idea right away in deference to Clint) and instead opened the door. “You comin’ home with me, Barton?”

For one moment, Clint looked so adorably confused, so out-of-water, and Tony worried that the answer would be no – that Clint had thought better of it, that Clint had thought better of _Tony_ – but then Clint let out a long breath and relaxed his shoulders forcibly. “If you’re offering a ride, Stark.”

“That I am,” Tony tried not to chirp. After all, he was a forty-plus-year-old man. He shouldn’t be chirping over acceptance, not at this point in his life.

Clint ducked into the car and Tony followed him in.

-

When they got back to the Avengers tower, Clint was pretty much on Tony’s lap, hands sliding up under Tony’s jacket and dress shirt, and Tony’s hands were cupping Clint’s ass, stroking and rubbing at the cleft, pinching and kneading his cheeks. Despite an initial awkwardness, which Tony had solved by taking Clint’s hand in his own, pressing a kiss to his pointer finger, and then slowly sucking Clint’s finger into his mouth, swallowing around it and watching Clint through his eyelashes - well, needless to say, Clint had had no problem shifting closer to kiss. And then kiss some more. And then straddle Tony’s lap and kiss and kiss until they were breathless and panting, trembling and sweating.

There was a discreet knock on the window – Happy, letting him know they were here – and Tony gave one last lingering suck against Clint’s tongue before pulling back with a groan, voice husky and rough. “Much as I would love to continue this, Clint, we’re here and I figure our first time shouldn’t be in the back of the car. At least let’s get to a nice bed where I can spread you out and lick every inch of you.”

Clint shuddered against Tony, dropping his forehead and bracing himself against the back of the seat, panting hard. “God, Tony,” he whimpered, rubbing his crotch against Tony’s thighs.

“No fair,” Tony whispered against Clint’s cheek. “C’mon, let’s get inside. You still want me when we get out of the elevator, we’ll move this to a bed and take our time.”

“I always want you,” Clint murmured, but he pulled back, color high in his cheeks and first three buttons of his shirt undone. Tony could hazily remember doing that with his teeth, licking over sweaty-slick skin with his tongue—

Alright, bad thoughts to have if they were trying to get out of the car.

The knock came again, and this time Clint leaned back, swallowing hard and staring at Tony with dilated eyes. If Tony had ever doubted whether Clint really wanted this, was alright with this, it was all in Clint’s eyes, in his hands fisted in Tony’s shirt, his erection prominent in the black slacks, and in his stuttering breaths. Tony reached up, rubbed his thumb along the line of Clint’s cheekbone, and then let his hand fall. “Alright, short stuff, let’s try and get into the elevator without losing some articles of clothing, whaddya say?”

The flush dying down, Clint haphazardly righted his clothing and opened the door, stepping out. Tony followed, flinching a bit from the cool air, and smiled at Happy, who discreetly nodded his head and got back in the car to park it. The express elevator didn’t go all the way to Tony’s floor, so they’d have to brave the common floor that held a communal living room, kitchen, washer and dryer area (it hadn’t before, but after Natasha and Steve had pitched a fit about Tony sending their clothing to a cleaning service, Tony had had it installed), game room, a library, and a landing pad for one of the smaller jets, Thor when he decided to visit, and the Iron Man armor when Tony left the tower with the group for whatever reason.

(Lately, it had just been press shoots and reassuring the public, which was something Tony was notoriously bad at and he’d pointed it out to Fury, but Fury seemed to think that his, Natasha’s, and Clint’s presences were all mandatory at any event that had the Avengers actually interacting with the public. The ‘human face’ Fury liked to say, and Steve, Thor, and Bruce were reserved for the more flashy productions.)

But there was no elevator to take to get to the higher floors, the more personalized ones, except for the ones on the common floor. That was mostly because Tony didn’t want to have anyone appear on the personalized floors that didn’t first make it pass the common room, because there would always be _someone_ in the common room at any given moment.

Now, though, that wasn’t a great idea. Especially after Tony's week, and his intense desire not to interact with either Natasha or Steve. Hopefully, it’d just be Bruce or Thor – members who would ignore the flushed state they were both in and the mess of their clothing. Pressing the close door button on the elevator, Tony found himself threading his finger’s with Clint’s, tugging the younger man against his body and nuzzling against Clint’s neck. He… _liked_ Clint, in a way that he’d not actually felt for a long while. Clint was someone who bantered with him, teased and tormented and stood up to him. Clint didn’t take any of Tony’s shit, and Tony could use a withering statement to make Clint see reason when Clint was being a stubborn asshole about something. And, okay, Tony would be the first to admit that telling him he _couldn’t_ do something was the way to make him _want_ to do something.

Still, he wasn’t exactly happy that the only one sitting in the living room area was Natasha, still in the fancy dress and heels, hair pulled back in a severe ponytail, eyes deadly cool. “Stark. Clint.”

“Aww, I thought we moved past last names, Widow,” Tony said reactively, glaring at her.

She stood up from the sofa, stalking over to them and stopping inches from Tony’s face. Tony was uncomfortably aware that his clothes were messed up from the car, that he was still breathing heavily, that he had a boner that was slowly dying in the face of her cold-eyed wrath.

“You two took your time coming back,” she murmured.

Heaving a sigh, Clint grabbed her elbow and tugged her away. “C’mon, Nats, let’s get something to drink.”

Cockblocked by that bitch. Tony was certainly starting to rethink his decision to allow her to stay in the tower. Clint was a big boy, could make his decisions for himself, didn’t need a big strong woman stepping in and protecting him.

The two of them moved to the kitchen, and he turned on his heel and stalked to the elevator, suddenly wanting a drink more than he could remember since he’d broken up with Pepper. Taking his elevator to his workroom, he locked the door behind him.

“JARVIS, ears on the kitchen, please.”

“Are you sure you want to do this, sir?”

Tony glared at the ceiling. “No time to get sassy with me, JARVIS.”

“You did inform me to caution you should you do anything that is legally defined as invasion of privacy, which I’m sure this qualifies as.”

“Just _do_ it, JARVIS.”

Audio suddenly cut in as he moved to the workbench and viciously tore apart the half-started project sitting there.

“—be fine. It’s not like – not like last time.”

“Clint, I’ve worked around Stark before. He’s self-centered, he has flings, not relationships, and he’s looking for a rebound after Pepper. You deserve much more than that.”

There was a pause and then a soft sigh. Natasha continued, “Are you sure about this? About him?”

“Look, Nats, I appreciate your efforts – don’t think I haven’t noticed you taking Tony aside, by the way, that was totally overkill and you know it, I've already tried to explain it to you – but I’m fine. I know what I’m walking into. Just a fling. I figure, well… it can’t be that bad. I’d like to try, you know?”

“But with _Stark_ ,” Natasha said, and Tony jerked the screwdriver, scoring a deep gash into the palm of his hand.

“Audio off,” he snapped, and the audio immediately cut off. There was silence for a long moment, broken by the sound of Tony ripping delicate wiring and throwing the casing across the worktable.

A whirr at his elbow made him look down and see Dum-E there, holding a first aid kit. He glanced at his hand and saw the blood welling out of the cut and spilling onto his wrist and the worktable.

“If you would, sir,” JARVIS said quietly, “You know how he worries.”

 Dum-E nudged against elbow and whirred again. Heaving a sigh, Tony took the kit and opened it up to pull out a bandage.

“Tony! Hey, JARVIS, can you open this door up for me?”

Tony whipped around in surprise to see Clint standing there, the top buttons of his shirt still undone and shirttails still rumpled from where Tony had messed them up in the car. He was knocking on the glass door and when he caught sight of Tony, he tilted his head in confusion.

“Tony, shit, I thought we were going to go back to your room and I just wanted to calm Nats down and – holy _shit_!”

“What?” Tony asked, jumping as he realized Clint was no longer staring at him but rather staring at the worktable. Perhaps there was a cockroach the size of his hand there – he’d become acquainted with New York insect life quite unwillingly and didn’t trust a creature that had that many legs and that ugly of a body.

“You’re fucking hand, what the hell happened? JARVIS, open the door!”

There was a moment of tense silence before Tony realized Clint meant _Tony’s_ hand, that Clint had seen Tony’s cut and that was what had him freaked out. “Ah – yeah, JARVIS, go ahead and let him in if he wants to come in.”

“Very good sir,” JARVIS responded and the door slid open with a hiss of air as Clint came in, talking as he did so.

“I mean, did you get one of those ideas? I’d think sex would be a good distractor, but I know how you get sometimes with the inspiration and shit, after all I’ve sat here and watched you tune everything out for hours on end, but I’ve got a serious case of the blue balls and figured you’d be helpful in that case, right?” Straddling the workbench beside Tony, he lifted up Tony’s hand and carefully wrapped the wound, wincing. “What the hell happened?”

Tony blinked at Clint and realized that Natasha hadn’t talked Clint out of it. Clint was here because he’d gone looking for Tony, and considering how Tony had pretty much just been listening into Clint’s and Natasha’s conversation, Clint must have either ignored Natasha or shut her down and come straight here, no lingering, no more conversation. A silly smile appeared on his face as he waved his other hand dismissively. “Nothing important, shortbus, just wanted to tweak something here and the screwdriver slipped, jammed it into my hand – ouch, ouch, ow, okay, thank you yes, bandage is on and everything’s fine.”

Making a face, Clint let go of Tony’s hands (and Tony did _not_ let his hand linger, of course he didn’t, that’d be stupid, why would he do that?) and shook his head. “Maybe you should get Bruce to look at it. I mean, you have the weirdest chemicals on your tools sometimes and you don’t want it to get infected or anything.”

“Ah, it’s not that deep, and now you’re here to distract me from the pain!” Tony said, leaning forward to let his nose bump Clint’s. “Everything’s fine.”

Clint smiled playfully, eyes delighted and just a bit mischievous. “So… are we gonna have sex _here_?”

Tony blinked. Of all the places in the tower that were comfortable, his workshop (and maybe Bruce’s lab) was not one of those places. He’d never had anyone show real interest in him while he was here, surrounded by metal and wires and holographic screens. “Do you want to have sex here?” he asked, taken aback enough to make the offer and intrigued enough to mean it sincerely.

And it looked like Clint considered it, too, looking over at the expensive cars, at the messy worktable, and then at the tiny cot he’d taken naps on before when he was working on a long-term project and secluded himself away from the world. “I wouldn’t mind, but you promised something about a bed and quite frankly I’d feel better if we had sex in an environment that didn’t have glass walls anyone can look into.”

“Right, yeah, of course,” Tony said immediately, standing up and running a hand through his hair. “I mean, yeah, so, you wanna go?”

Clint snickered. “Smooth, Tony. Real smooth.”

And just like that, all the tension, all the worry, everything slid away and it was just Tony and Clint again, just the two of them, and Tony could put out of his mind everything that had happened, everything that he had overheard. “Well, powder-puff, I’m certain I can be much, much smoother when I’ve gotten you splayed out on my bed and I’m licking over the head of your cock,” he purred, voice husky and low.

Clint’s eyes dilated, and his breath caught jaggedly before he let out a weak chuckle. “Damn, Tony. I’ll admit, you’re one sexy motherfucker.”

“That I am,” Tony said smugly, because it was true, and he reveled in what he did best, and he was going to have sex with _Clint_ and Clint wasn’t shying away anymore. He couldn’t stop himself from reaching out, running fingers over the back of Clint’s palm or tracing the lines of corded muscle in Clint’s arms, and Clint was walking backwards, hands hooked in Tony’s waistband, leaning forward to press light kisses against Tony’s nose and cheekbones and lips and neck as he tugged Tony out of the workshop and down the hall to where Tony’s ginormous bedroom was.

They fumbled their way into the door and kicked it behind them, tugging at clothes and biting kisses over the other’s skin. Tony managed to peel off Clint’s shirt first and ran his fingers over Clint’s ribs, over old and recent scars that lined his frame, over freckles that were so light you almost couldn’t see them unless you were close enough to lick them.

Which Tony was, of course.

Clint let out a breathless moan, head falling back, as Tony laved his tongue over a constellation of freckles near Clint’s left nipple, near enough to tease but still not touching the erect bud. “Bed,” Clint panted, wriggling his hips as Tony sympathetically undid Clint’s fly and pushed the slacks down over Clint’s hips. “Or a wall. Or the fucking floor but _Tony_ —”

Tony got the picture, standing back up from where he had bent down and placing his hands around Clint’s waist, directing him back towards the bed. When the back of Clint’s knees hit the bed, well, he was _supposed_ to fall back and let Tony show his sexual expertise by stripping off the last article of Clint’s clothing, his briefs, with Tony’s teeth, but apparently Clint hadn’t kicked off his shoes or pants, and the tangle of clothes nearly dropped Clint to the floor in the move backwards. Tony grabbed Clint’s arms, pulling him tight, and Clint froze, some of the playfulness disappearing from his eyes.

Swallowing, Tony dropped to his knees – he still had his own pants on, but he’d kicked his shoes off the minute they’d come through the door – and undid Clint’s shoes, keeping his movements smooth and gentle. When Clint’s eyes refocused, Tony had gotten both the shoes and his pants off, and was still kneeling on the ground.

“We good?” he whispered, rubbing his thumb over the side of Clint’s knee.

Licking his lips, Clint nodded. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”

“Hmm.” Tony stood back up and met Clint’s gaze for a long moment. There was resolve there, and whatever fear that had been there before was gone. Leaning forward, Tony drew Clint into a deep kiss, mapping as much area of Clint’s mouth as possible before they both ran out of breath and had to break apart, panting raggedly. “You wanna lay down for me?”

Clint turned to the bed, crawling onto it – damn he looked hot in those tight briefs and nothing else, black fabric against tanned skin – and turned around to face Tony. “So now what?” he asked, a hint of humor back in his voice.

It was that humor that had Tony smiling back, crawling onto the bed and straddling Clint’s hips. “Now,” he murmured, “I think I promised I’d lick you until you were writhing under my tongue.”

“Big talk for an old man,” Clint teased.

Tony tapped a finger against Clint’s hip and bent over Clint’s briefs, removing them carefully and slowly to reveal a perfectly flushed cock, standing proudly erect, precum pooling at the slit. Bending his head, he dabbed his tongue at the slit and lapped at the salty fluid. Clint shuddered almost violently beneath Tony’s hands, and he paused, looking up the length of Clint’s body (sexy treasure trail; Tony made a note to later lick his way over it) to meet Clint’s wide eyes.

Clint looked so – _surprised_ , so amazed, at what Tony was doing that Tony decided that he was going to give Clint the ride of Clint’s life if it killed the both of them. Certainly he was going to do his utmost to send Clint into orbit. Whatever had made Clint freeze at different points in time, made Clint go distant and aloof, Tony wanted to erase it all with tongue and touch and kindness.

So he gently nudged Clint’s legs up, bracing Clint’s feet on the bed and pushing them wide to give him access to Clint’s balls and ass, and then he was lowering his head again and lapping at the wrinkled skin, the smooth line back to Clint’s ass, letting his tongue swirl against the cleft without delving deep inside.

Clint let out a little yelp, thighs quivering as he threw his head back and panted, chest heaving. Smug, Tony drew his tongue back to Clint’s balls, laving them, and then pressed an open-mouthed kiss to the head of Clint’s cock.

“ _Je_ -sus, Tony!” Clint gasped, neck corded and the sheets bunched under his grasping fists.

“Mmm, give me a moment.” Kneeling up – well, shit, still had his pants on – Tony reached across the bed to the nightstand, pulling out the tube of lube that would make this a lot easier. He hesitated, but then pulled out a condom. They had regular medical check-ups and Tony knew both he and Clint were clean, but… eh. Not assuming was probably best.

It was kinda hard to concentrate, because quite frankly he was a very sexual person, someone who enjoyed physical intimacy, and he had been looking for something fun with Clint, something that would be easy and fast and, okay yeah, something to rub in Natasha’s face because she was the one who planted the idea there first. So when he had Clint, naked and spread over his sheets, looking up at him with just as much lust as Tony himself felt, it was difficult to coordinate everything and act the suave seducer that he knew he was. Then again, he was partially intoxicated, worried that Clint would change his mind half-way through and not say anything so Tony would have to notice without any verbal cues, and, well…

He just really wanted this to go right, in a way he couldn’t remember ever really wanting with anyone besides Pepper.

Slicking one of his fingers, he nuzzled against Clint’s navel and licked a hot stripe through the hair that arrowed down to Clint’s cock. “You ready, babe?” he purred, eyes hooded and intense.

Clint licked his lips and nodded, in equal parts eager and nervous, so Tony brought his clean hand up to draw hurried mathematical equations over the inside of Clint’s thigh while he circled Clint’s hole with one finger. Turning his head to the side, he sucked on the side of Clint’s cock, tongue dancing over the veins and satin-soft skin there. Slowly, very carefully, he moved his mouth from the base of Clint’s cock to the head, sucking and licking and tasting while Clint shifted and flinched and let out breathless moans. When he reached the head, he looked up the lean line of Clint’s body, holding his gaze, as he rounded his lips and inch by inch, swallowed Clint down to the root.

“Holy _fuck_ Tony _fuck shit_ —” Clint couldn’t seem to look away, eyes wide and his voice was a mere whimper, mouth hanging open and the flush of arousal trailing down Clint’s neck, down his chest, dying out around Clint’s pecs. With Clint’s full attention on what Tony’s mouth was doing, Tony slid his index finger into Clint’s ass to the second knuckle, rubbing the sensitive skin of Clint’s ass with his thumb, sliding his finger side to side to feel the slick-smooth walls of Clint’s ass. And that, _that_ , made Clint’s eyes roll back and his hands move spastically to grip at Tony’s shoulders.

Pulling his mouth and throat off of Clint’s dick, he rose up on his knees and slid the rest of his finger home, prodding inside for Clint’s prostrate, getting Clint’s body ready to accept something much thicker than one finger. “Do you trust me?” Tony murmured, leaning over Clint’s body to bite at Clint’s nipple.

There was a full-body convulsion at the bite, and Clint’s eyes looked far away, dazed by pleasure. Tony took stock – if Clint was distancing himself, they needed to stop right away – but it looked more like… like overload of pleasure, like Clint was flying, not falling. “Trust you,” Clint whispered, voice ragged and slow, slurred almost, and Tony hesitated for one minute, two.

It looked… it looked a lot like back when Tony was in his more experimental days, back when he didn’t care who the press caught him with because his parents were alive or Obadiah was in charge of the company and he was just the fuck-up son of the founder, not the head that affected stock fluctuations. It looked a lot like when Tony would venture out of vanilla and explore his controlling tendencies in an environment where the other person wanted to be controlled.

It looked a lot like someone start to fly high because of the level of pain.

That was a new development that Tony hadn’t expected. If Clint was into pain, Tony would have to watch for taking it too far when Clint couldn’t reliably be expected to speak up. And, heck, that would explain why Clint would be wary of getting in a relationship with anyone, not just Tony. After all, Tony had done nothing more than bite at Clint’s nipple and he’d gotten this reaction – what would happen if he turned Clint over his knees and reddened that ass?

Oh _shit_ , that was a lovely image.

“Can you hear me?” Tony asked, making his voice firm and rough, testing the boundaries of where this was going to go.

“Yeah…” Clint replied, thrusting his hips up in little involuntary jerks that made Tony’s mouth water. Fuck, Clint was so fucking _responsive_ …

Leaning down, rubbing his beard against Clint’s cheek, Tony whispered into Clint’s ear, “How you doing, Clint? How far down are you? You flying?”

“Shit, yeah…” Clint sighed, rubbing his face cat-like against Tony’s cheek. “Falling down, flying, Tony, _fuck_ —” Clint let out a whining sound, hips pumping more frantically.

Mmm, found Clint’s prostrate. Licking his lips, Tony decided to keep everything fairly light tonight, waiting until he could discuss this rationally with Clint, and so withdrew his finger and poured more lube over his fingers, sliding two in and scissoring them. Clint writhed, humping back to meet his fingers, eyes dazed and half-lidded as he stared past Tony at the ceiling. Tony leaned down and bit into the meat of Clint’s shoulder.

Clint keened, arching his head back and digging his heels into the bed. His erection dug into Tony’s abdomen and Tony bit his lip, trying not to let it happen too fast. He wanted Clint to come, wanted Clint to have that looseness when Tony entered because it was clear from trying to stretch Clint’s ass that Clint was either a virgin (which, again, explained a lot of Clint’s nervousness) or just hadn’t done this in a _looooong_ while. That added looseness would help and hey, if Tony had a kink about fucking a partner who was loose and boneless and sated into the mattress, well, it wouldn’t harm Clint and in fact would probably get Clint off a second time, if he could finagle it right.

So he finished stretch Clint’s ass with two fingers and withdrew them, ignoring the absolutely adorably hot whimpers and whines that Clint made when he removed his fingers, and moved his hand to Clint’s erection, wrapping his hand around the shaft and pinching a little at the base. With his other hand, he took one of Clint’s arms and pinned it above Clint’s head before leaning down to Clint’s mouth and giving him a hot and filthy kiss, sucking on Clint’s tongue and trading spit, running his tongue over Clint’s gums and teeth, tasting everything Clint had to offer.

Moaning and gasping, Clint automatically moved his other arm up mirror to what Tony had done with his left arm, and Tony shifted his grip to include both wrists in his one-handed (loose, not too tight, not tonight, careful Tony) grasp. Pressing down over Clint’s body, he scraped his teeth over Clint’s throat and chest before biting into Clint’s chest, sucking a deep bruise against the pale, freckled skin.

“Shit, Tony, _yesss_ ,” Clint hissed, voice catching, and Tony could see the flutter of Clint’s eyes, the way they were getting more unfocused. Clint’s orgasm needed to happen before Tony tried to breach that ass – Clint was practically virgin-tight, and any extra looseness that could be done needed to happen to make this pleasurable for Clint. Just ‘cause Clint liked pain didn’t mean Tony wanted to do too much the first day without having clearly defined boundaries.

Tightening his hand around Clint’s erection, Tony pumped his hand once, twice, rubbing his thumb on the underside of the head of Clint’s cock, biting a line of bruises over Clint’s collarbone to his neck, and it must’ve been a _long_ time for Clint because within seconds he was coming, body strung tight and shoulders vibrating, arms pressed hard against the bed and hips thrusting erratically, breath stuttering out of his chest as he keened sharply, voice rising enough that Tony was glad that there was no one else on this floor.

When Clint was done, he slumped down, breathing hard, and Tony tugged on an earlobe with his teeth. “You still with me, babe?” he whispered.

It obviously took effort, but Clint nodded weakly.

“I’m gonna stretch you with three fingers now, get your hole loose and open and ready for my cock, and then I’m gonna bend you in half and fuck you until you forget your own name.”

Clint moaned, dick twitching in Tony’s grasp, and then he shied away, whimpering. Oversensitive, and Tony let go of Clint’s cock and instead liberally poured lube over three of his fingers before working them into Clint’s ass.

The orgasm had definitely loosened Clint up, though Tony wasn’t going to take any chances. He bit his lip, his body telling him that he was close to coming just from watching Clint. Clint was limp against the covers, mouth slack and chest and neck messed up from Tony’s teeth, wrists reddened where Tony had leaned hard against them to keep Clint pinned as Clint had come. He looked the picture of debauchery, come smeared over his belly and Tony’s, over his thighs and Tony’s – _shit_ , he still had his pants on, his slacks, and he’d been aware vaguely of the zipper pressing painfully against his erection but he’d been so focused on Clint he hadn’t undone his fly. Oh well, the cleaners had had to take care of more suspicious stains that Tony could ever remember – it wouldn’t matter in the long run.

Clint jerked slightly, breath catching, as Tony prodded his prostrate, and Tony angled his fingers away in order to keep from over-stimulating Clint and turning pleasure into pain. Clint twitched again, legs falling open just a little wider, and that was it, Tony was done, it was always hard to deny himself what he wanted and god _he wanted_.

Pulling his fingers out, he fumbled at his fly, shoved down his pants and boxers down enough to get his cock and purple balls out, ripped open the condom package to shove it on hastily, and then he was slicking himself up, trying not to lose it before he even got in.

“Hope you’re ready, Clint, babe, ‘cause you’re making me crazy,” he breathed roughly, gripping Clint’s waist and tilting Clint’s ass up to align his dick with Clint’s hole.

Clint’s hands and arms flexed, but he didn’t move his arms, kept them in that one place and tilted his hips up, presenting himself to Tony.

Breath catching in the back of his throat, Tony braced his hands against Clint’s ass and eased in slowly, trying not to go fast, not to take advantage. Clint grunted, ass instinctively tightening against the intrusion, and Tony had to stop and bite his lip a moment. Absently, he ran his fingers over Clint’s thighs as he whispered, “C’mon, baby, gotta loosen a bit, gotta let me in, just push back, I’ll go slow, let me know if it’s hurting, oh god baby it’s so fucking good you’re so fucking amazing, push back, bear down, relax those muscles and—”

Tony sunk into Clint another two inches and he stuttered, speech coming to a faltering stop. His hands were supping Clint’s ass, helping tilt it in the correct position, and he paused to knead and massage the globes beneath his hands, licking his lips. “Goddam, Clint, god-fucking-damn you are so beautiful babe, so fucking gorgeous like this, keep your hands there, that’s it, let your legs fall open a bit more, _beautiful_ —”

Two more inches, a pause, then one more and Tony was balls-deep in Clint’s ass, the almost too-tight channel gripping and shifting around him and he stayed absolutely still, unable to do more than that if he wanted to take his time, make it good for Clint, try and coax another erection and climax out of Clint. He wanted to wring Clint dry, show Clint exactly what Tony could do for him so that Clint would never hesitate about sex again, wanted to wow Clint and show off and yeah, seduce the ever-loving _shit_ out of Clint, and so he removed one hand, let it travel from Clint’s ass to the balls resting against Tony’s abdomen, hefting them and rubbing them gently. Clint moaned weakly, dick twitching against his thigh, still smeared with the cum he had ejaculated earlier. With a gentle pat, Tony let go of them and kneeled up, pulling Clint’s ass all the way onto his lap and leaning over to brace one hand against the headboard above Clint’s stationary wrists.

“You’re so gorgeous, precious, babe, do you know what you look like?” he asked, rocking his hips ever so slightly to begin to build up some give in Clint’s still-tense ass. “Spread out like this, stained with your cum and sweat, eyes glassy, hair matted, too fucked out to do anything but take it and still trying to do your best to ease my way in? And your wrists, your fucking _wrists_ and arms, stretched out over your head like that, such a good listener, not moving them at all, makes me think I could order you to kneel and fuck your mouth and you’d stay kneeling, that I could – _shit_ – give you any order at all and you’d obey—”

Whether it was Tony’s words, or Tony’s dick in Clint’s ass, or Tony’s hand gripping the meat of Clint’s ass, or a combination of any of those, Clint was beginning to whimper and rock his body onto Tony’s cock, knees falling farther apart to bare his half-grown erection to the world. Experimentally, Tony moved his hand from Clint’s ass to his dick and Clint groaned, growing more interested in the proceedings.

Tony lowered his mouth to Clint’s, licking over loose lips and gaping mouth, Clint starting to respond enthusiastically, if a bit tiredly. Pulling back, Tony sucked a hickey to the side of Clint’s jaw and whispered, “You okay, babe? You ready?”

“Yeah, Tony, fuck yeah,” Clint replied, hips twitching and shifting. “Feels – really good, Tony, keep, yeah, harder, please, harder, _harder_ —”

Always obliging, Tony sped up his thrusts, curling his fingers around Clint’s dick, and shuddered. “Shit, Clint, god, you’re amazing, gorgeous, babe,” and perhaps it wasn’t the most inventive or the best response or even the wisest thing to say but he had the image of Clint imprinted in the backs of his eyelids, and even with his eyes closed he could see Clint there with limbs stretched out voluntarily over his head, receptive, open, _needy_ in a way that wasn’t obvious, and Tony’s climax took him completely by surprise, locking his muscles down and his fist clenched around Clint’s cock.

Clint let out a squawk or surprise, a high-pitched yelp, and then he was oozing cum, the ejaculation less forceful than the first but definitely a climax. Tony slumped over Clint’s body and chest, lazily tracing his tongue over the trails of sweat down Clint’s neck and over his chest, absently sucking on a bruise or bite to darken it.

Whining a bit, Clint shifted away from Tony’s touch. Probably _really_ sensitized now, and Tony should be a gentleman and go clean up his partner. He should really go do that. Any time now.

It took him a bit longer to convince his body to respond to his mental commands, pulling free of Clint (Clint whimpered, wincing, and Tony once more revisited the idea that Clint might be a virgin and Tony hoped he’d done well for Clint’s first time) and stumbling into the en suite bathroom to peel off his stained slacks and boxers, throw away the condom, wet a towel, and drag it back into the bedroom to wipe up the mess. He wasn’t inconsiderate enough to make Clint sleep in the wet spot – he tugged the sheet off and away, dabbed at the sticky cum coating Clint’s groin and ass and trailing down Clint’s thighs and up Clint’s abdomen, and then grabbed at the comforter and pulled it over the both of them.

-

When he woke up, Clint wasn’t in the bed with him.

-

He made his way to the elevator, his only nod to propriety the wife-beater and boxers he’d pulled on once he’d dragged himself out of bed. In the elevator, he became intimately aware that his hair was a mess and he had sleep creases all over his face, his eyes were bloodshot, and he generally looked horrible. With a sigh, he scrubbed half-heartedly at his face as the reflective elevator doors opened up to the common living space.

Clint was sitting on the couch, playing video games with Thor.

“Clint?” Tony asked, confused.

“Hey, Tony. It’s three in the afternoon, by the way.”

Huh. Tony glanced at the clock, then glanced at Clint and Thor. Finally deciding he couldn’t make his brain work at this point without coffee, he shuffled to the kitchen and blindly groped for a coffee mug from one of the cabinets.

“What the _hell_ , Stark?”

“Jesus _Christ_ Natasha!” Tony gasped, leaping into the air and dropping the mug, where it shattered on the floor.

“Is everything okay in there, Tony?” Clint called.

Considering that he had the Widow’s Bites pressed against his balls and a knife against his throat, Tony wasn’t quite sure how to answer that until Natasha dug the Bites deeper against his sensitive organs. “F-fine, just fine, don’t mind me!” he responded quickly. “Natasha, what the _hell_?” he hissed, cringing away as much as he could with the counter at his back and five feet and one inches of female fury crowding his front.

“Clint is bitten and _bruised_ , Anthony Stark, and that’s because of _you_!”

“Hey, wait – Clint’s a big boy, he liked everything that happened, I was careful and shit why aren’t you asking him if it was consensual?! Hell, you made a pass at me once, can you blame him for—”

With a growl, Natasha pressed the hilt of the knife into his windpipe and Tony broke off with a strangled squeak, desperately trying to pull in some air.

“Nats, I said leave it be. Everything’s fine – it’s just sex, remember?”

Tony had never been so glad to see Clint in all his life.

“He _hurt_ you,” Natasha snarled, and there was something in her eyes that, on anyone else, Tony would describe as fear, though it seemed so out of place he didn't know whether he could really call it that.

“And I like to be hurt sometimes, Nats, and there’s nothing wrong with that, we discussed this already. Can we not do this here? Please? Can you fucking trust me on this?” Clint’s voice was tired, which was great, yeah, of course _Clint_ got to be tired, it was only Tony standing here, having his balls literally pinned to the cabinets before he even had his first cup of coffee.

Natasha didn’t move for a minute, and then suddenly her elbow was in Tony’s gut and Tony doubled over, gasping, as she stepped on his instep and moved away. “You don’t have to be hurt in sex, Clint,” she muttered before moving out of the kitchen. Distantly, Tony could hear Thor say, “Ah, fair Widow!” but he ignored it as he tried to stop the minor heart attack he had.

“Sorry about that,” Clint said wearily. “She gets - really protective.”

Tony couldn’t believe Clint had said that. “No _shit_ ,” he grunted. “What the hell, Clint? I mean, I didn’t think it was that bad last night, thought you enjoyed it—”

“No, I did, Tony, I _did_ , she just – overreacts a lot when it comes to me. She's been through - she's stood by me through some bad shit.”

Tony slanted an unbelieving glance at Clint. “You’ve had relationships before. Is it because it’s a guy? She’s homophobic? Or because it’s _me_ , which is kinda hypocritical because she’s jumped me before. Or I jumped her – I don’t really remember – not the point, point is, she has no right to get upset because it’s _me_ , I mean look, was it really that bad? Did I read things wrong? You could just _tell_ me, you know, and not sic her on me!”

Clint was growing visibly uncomfortable and so just rolled his eyes, shoulders tense and voice tight. “Chill, Tones. I didn’t ‘sic’ her on you, you didn’t read things wrong, and it’s – okay, it’s a _little_ bit because of you, but it’s some other reason, not just that. Alright? She’ll just - get used to it. I'm telling them to back off but once they see that - that nothing bad's happening, they’ll _all_ back off – and leave us alone. It’s - it's just sex, after all. Right?”

“Yeah,” Tony muttered, staring at the coffee mug in pieces at his feet. “Look, where’s one of the cleaning robots? JARVIS?”

“One is being sent as I speak, sir. Shall I revoke some of Ms. Romanova’s access to the tower?”

“Nah, nah, I’m… fine,” Tony sighed as the tiny robot zipped into the room and began hunting for the ceramic shards while Tony sat there and wondered what the hell had happened in his life.

“So… we cool?” Clint asked, eyeing Tony warily.

And… well, if Tony was a little offended that Clint hadn’t stuck around in the morning, if he was annoyed that Clint was brushing off Natasha’s very serious threats, if he wanted a better explanation than 'Natasha's been through shit with me' as to why Natasha hated him (when previously, okay, he had thought they'd gotten to a good point in their relationship), if hearing Clint repeat ‘just sex’ bothered him a bit, he could deal, right? Clint was hot, the sex was hot, and this had a few good months still left in it. He didn’t expect it to go on for long, after all, not with Clint’s personality and his own personality and all the team frowning in disapproval. He could put up with it all until Clint inevitably ended it.

“Yeah, we’re cool, gorgeous,” he said easily, smiling. “You wanna let Agent and Fury know so that they don’t put me through the same thing, too?”

*

It lasted for seven months.

 

*

 

“This has got to be some kind of record, Pepper, I’m telling ya – no, you dummy, just go over there and be useless somewhere else. I could tear you apart and build myself another oven, you know! – but seriously, Pep, this is – this has gone on longer than even – well, you know.”

“I know,” she said with a long-suffering sigh. “Please would you just sign the papers and go back to talking to Dum-E about your love problems?”

Tony jerked, slamming his head on the underside of the car and he cursed loudly. “Love problems? Who said anything about love problems?”

Pepper squinted at him and said slowly, “It was a phrase of speech. Why, should I not be using that one word you seem to be allergic to?”

“It’s just sex,” Tony said automatically, used to hearing Clint dismiss it to Steve, to Bruce, to Thor, to Natasha, to Fury, to Hill, to Jane, to Coulson, heck, to the new interns who would walk in at the most _inopportune_ times. And if his voice sounded a little bitter, well…

Clint never stayed the night in his bed. He didn’t like public affection all that much, threw Tony’s extravagant gifts to the side and point-blank told him not to do anything like that again. Clint didn’t seem to appreciate the nicknames or the way Tony would attempt to greet him.

But Clint came to bed, almost every single night he wasn’t on a mission. Clint had delved with Tony into the darker world of sex, experimenting with handcuffs, floggers, butt plugs, cock rings, nipple clamps, ropes, paddling, and spanking. Clint would still hang out with Tony in the workshop most of the time he was free and had nothing else to do. Clint would even make a point to visit Tony after a bad day, or call him when Tony was in the office and have filthy phone sex during lunch hour. Clint took the time to ask about Tony's day, sat through long nights in the workshop alongside Tony, and sat by Tony when Tony got injured in battle.

Clint was a study of contradictions and it was frustrating Tony to no end that he couldn’t get a handle on the archer.

“Do you… want it to be more?” Pepper ventured, and Tony flinched again, burning his finger against the welder.

“Shit, fuck, ouch, ow, okay, Pepper, no more, I insist, you have to stop poking at it, it’s fine, there’s nothing, Dum-E, can you – thanks.” Tony took the first aid kit from Dum-E’s helpful claw and opened it up to pull out a tiny bandage for the burn. Clint would notice – Clint always seemed to notice when Tony acquired another scar, another mark, on his hands. Clint loved Tony’s hands, and Tony loved to let Clint love his hands.

Fuck. There was that word again. _Love_.

He couldn’t love Clint. It just didn’t seem right, didn’t seem _possible_. How could he love someone who didn’t speak with him, didn’t communicate with him, treated this very much as a friends with benefits situation? Tony should be happy – he was getting sex regularly and wasn’t tied down to remembering anniversaries, dates, reservations at a restaurant or game. All the benefits, none of the drawbacks.

“You know, it’s okay to love someone, right Tony? Just because we didn’t work out doesn’t mean you need to, I don’t know… hang around forever waiting. You could have a good thing with Clint, if you want. _After_ you sign these papers.”

“I mean, why is it so bad to be hooked up with me anyway, Pepper? I can’t – I mean, it was good, the two of us, right? What were my flaws? What did I do wrong?”

Pepper gave him a measuring look and panic bloomed in the bottom of his stomach. “Fuck, Peps, that much? I mean – shit, I thought we were doing _fine_.”

With a sigh, Pepper put down the paperwork on the nearest flat surface and massaged her temples with both hands. “I’m not drunk enough for this conversation, Tony…”

“No, really – what do I need to fix? I can work on it, make it better!”

Licking her lips, Pepper said slowly, “You know… it was just small things. It’s not – you don’t need to—”

“I really, really do,” Tony interrupted, stepping away from the car and giving Pepper his undivided attention.

“Tony…” Pepper pinched the bridge of her nose. “Okay. You could, maybe, work on treating people like… people.”

Tony cocked his head at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“ _Don’t_ get all defensive; you _asked_ , Tony!” Pepper snipped, pinning him with a stern glare.

Tony mimed zipping his mouth.

“It’s just…” Pepper shook her head. “You give everyone nicknames. It’s something you do, I’ve gotten used to it, but it can be demeaning. Trivializing. You run over people when you’re excited, and can bully people into doing what you want. You see every night together in bed as a victory, and sometimes people don’t like feeling like a conquest. They want to feel that… that you have a connection with them. You are with them for something beyond being able to brag that you’re a god in bed or something.”

Shocked, Tony opened his mouth, but closed it immediately when Pepper pointed an imperative finger at him. When it was clear he wasn’t going to say anything, she leaned against the worktable and hitched a shoulder. “It’s just… very draining, to have a partner like that. To reach for an emotional connection and not get it. It’s easier to remain separate and untouched if you keep that barrier of ‘just sex’ between you.”

Deciding that, for the moment, it would be best to just swallow his pride and _fix_ the problem, he asked, “So how do I fix it?”

 

*

 

“You wanna explain what’s going on?”

Tony registered the belligerent tone before he registered the speaker, and it took him a while to disengage from the security system plans and coding and look up. “Clint?” he asked, and his voice held an edge of a slur to it – sure sign he’d probably been at this a lot longer than the two hours he thought it would take. How the contractor managed to screw up the sensor unit so badly, Tony couldn’t even figure out—

“ _Tony_!”

“Yes! Yes.” Tony blinked and focused his eyes back on Clint. “Clint. Yes. You were saying?”

Clint’s eyes were pinched, and there was a nervous tension strung through his arms. Now that Tony was looking – really _looking_ – some warning signs were beginning to pop up, signs that he’d seen before. Folded arms, refusal to look into his eyes, tension in the shoulders, narrow lips…

 _Shit_ , was he really that bad that Clint wanted to break up with him? He couldn’t even do a proper ‘friends with benefits’ relationship?

“You wanted something, Clint?” he asked, careful not to slip into nicknames. Pepper’s rules and recommendations flew through his mind – _let Clint lead, don’t talk so much, ask for his input, no more nicknames, take time to be slow and gentle and kind_ – and he repeated them over and over as he watched Clint fiddle with a circuit board on the opposite worktable.

“I said,” Clint began, “What’s going on? What’s up with you?”

“What’s up with _me_?” Tony echoed, furrowing his brow. He wasn’t quite certain where Clint was trying to lead the conversation, so he shook his head. “Nothing’s up with me. Everything’s perfect. Great. Why, is something up with _you_?”

“You’re – you’re acting different. Not like you. You trying to break up or something?”

Tony licked his lips nervously. “I wasn’t aware that there was something to break up in the first place,” he ventured, because this was the first time Clint ever even indicated they might actually have a relationship. Normally it was just ‘this is Tony’ or ‘yeah, this is my friend’ or  ‘just sex, right Tony?’ And Tony would nod and accept he wasn’t a boyfriend and smile wide at the galas and try his hardest to follow all of Pepper’s rules so that, okay, yeah, he wanted Clint to see him as a boyfriend, wanted to wake up holding Clint, wanted to roll over and kiss Clint sleepily, run fingers over drowsy limbs, and have mutual morning blowjobs. He wanted Clint not to shy away from his touch at the Avengers’ dining table, wanted Clint to put his head in Tony’s lap during movie night, wanted Clint to feel comfortable bumping shoulders with Tony when they walked down the corridors of the helicarrier.

“Yeah, there’s nothing there at all, is there?” Clint sneered, voice cold and face twisted. “Just sex, right?”

Feeling that having that thrown into his face was highly unfair when Tony had been trying to _fix_ that, Tony said immediately, “Hey, I’m not the one that said that, okay? Don’t pin that on me.”

“You never said it was wrong! You never said it was anything different!”

“Because you seemed to hate anything more than ‘just sex’! I’d try and you’d ignore me and then Natasha would show up and I wouldn’t even have a chance!” Tony exclaimed, standing up from where he’d been sitting.

Clint curled his lip contemptuously. “Maybe Nats was right. It’s just gratification with you, isn’t it? Just good sex, like having someone to fuck, don’t you? Needed a pity lay to get back on the horse after Pepper?”

“You know it wasn’t that, Clint,” Tony snarled. “If anything, I had to pick at _you_ to get you to – to agree to this! You’re the one acting like this is – this is nothing, I shouldn’t worry about the fact that the _whole fucking team_ has informed me what will happen if I screw up and do something and I haven’t even _done_ anything yet!”

“Well, you sure as fuck have now!” Clint growled, and he spun on his heel and made his way to the door.

Tony wasn’t certain how it had devolved into accusations, into yelling, knowing it was probably his fault, he swallowed his pride and raised his voice. “What do I have to do?”

His hand already on the door, Clint paused for a moment. “What?”

“What more do I have to fucking _do_? I did everything I was supposed to, I tried to treat you better, I followed all the rules and all the warnings and didn’t mess with you and _I thought it was working just fine—_ ”

And he stopped. Because those were the words he had used with Pepper, and with two other people (Tiberius, Jan), and it hadn’t mattered in the least. He _always_ thought it was working fine… and it never was.

“Fuck it,” he mumbled under his breath, and turned back to the workbench, savagely stabbing at the keys to try and fix the coding. In minutes he was swearing, trying to undo what he just did because he was a fucking idiot and everyone knew that, everyone knew it and knew this was going to fail and had _warned him_ —

“So you know I kinda like pain.”

Tony hunched his shoulders, bending over the holographic keyboard, but his fingers paused over the keys.

“And, well… kid straying into that field, without a good guide… let’s just say my first – and only other – male relationship wasn’t all that great. Was, um. Well. It was Natasha who took me to the emergency room. And she, you know. She hung around for the - the two months of medical leave. So. I mean, I could - I learned to... control myself. I didn’t need it, just... wanted it. And, well hell, sometimes even bullet wounds could do it for me. Medical understood - sometimes I just... wouldn’t come to get patched up. So – so that’s why Natasha freaks when – when I have bruises. She kinda… showed me it didn’t have to be that way. That I could do other things to get what I needed. She doesn't, um. Understand. Not the whole - pain thing. She doesn't... get it that much. Coulson neither.”

A hand tentatively reached out, brushing lightly against Tony’s neck before resting against Tony’s shoulder blades. “You – okay, so, fuck, I’m not drunk enough for this discussion.”

“You and me both,” Tony murmured, but some of the tension left his shoulders. “What, um—” Aware that his voice cracked, he cleared his throat and tried again. “What do I need to – to do to fix this? To – to make it okay? For you? For them?”

Clint laughed, and then Clint’s forehead was pressed against the back of Tony’s neck. “I never wanted you to fix it for them. They'll get over themselves eventually. And... well. You were doing it. You weren’t pushy. You made sure I was okay before you – before you fucked me. You talked about things before doing it. You called me nicknames and it was playful and fun with that edge of danger I like. Why did _you_ change all that?”

Tony bit his lip. He was going to _kill_ Pepper. Or, well, no, then he’d have to actually run the company. He was going to do something crazy, without warning her. Without telling her.

“I – was told that I needed to treat you better. And that I needed to show I was serious, and stop treating – well, _everything_ – like a joke. So.” Tony cleared his throat. “I tried to be… serious.”

Clint started out snickering. The snickers transformed into full belly-laughs, until he was shaking helplessly against Tony’s back. “You?” he finally gasped. “Serious?”

“I can be serious if I have to be,” Tony said, and maybe it came out a bit more bitter than he meant it to be. Or, you know. Came out bitter when he hadn’t meant to put that emotion there at all, because his brain was awful at listening to him when it came to emotion.

Behind him, Clint stopped laughing and instead breathed in deeply. “I know, Tony,” he said matter-of-factly. “I know.”

Together they sat there, Tony leaning over the keyboard, Clint pressed up against his back, until Clint murmured, “You know the one thing you did absolutely perfect? The one thing that convinced me you could be the real deal?”

Tilting back his head so he could rest it against Clint’s head, Tony asked, “What?”

“The way you treated sex. The way you _didn't_ treat me during sex.”

A smirk began to grow on Tony’s face, and because he enjoyed teasing, he summarized, “So basically, the sex? Am I your boy-toy, gorgeous?”

Clint punched him lightly in the side, and when Tony doubled up laughing, he leaned down and whispered, “Do we get to have angry make-up sex now? With maybe the cuffs?”

 

*

 

Tony hadn’t forgotten Pepper, and Natasha, and Steve, and Coulson. He wanted to do something that would give Pepper a mild heart attack, piss off Natasha, and show the whole world he didn’t give a damn what they thought anymore.

His mind came up with the perfect solution.

 

*

 

The gala was like any other high charity shindig that Fury made them attend in order to show that the Avengers team was half full-blooded humans, no extra edges at all. People got antsy around Thor, terrified around Bruce, and awed around Steve, and they tended to separate the Avengers from average humans. It was Tony, Clint, and Natasha that stood in for the rest of humanity.

Still, this charity ball was a bit more high class, a bit more important because it had senators and governors, visiting ambassadors and even a few UN members milling around. It was Fury’s way of introducing the Avengers to a response team that wouldn’t operate solely in the state of New York, but be welcome everywhere.

Tony waited until the hors d’oeuvres had circulated three or four times before nabbing Clint’s elbow and tugging him towards the dance floor. Clint squirmed under the attention of all the other guests.

“What the hell, Tony?” he hissed. “I don’t want to dance with anyone!”

“Not even me?” Tony purred, eyes hooded and promising a delightful gift once they got home if Clint went through with this for him.

Clint paused. “You? You’re gonna dance with me in front of all of these people?”

“Let’s show them how it’s done, whaddya say?” Tony smirked, holding out his hand to Clint at the edge of the dance floor.

They had attracted quite a bit of attention, and there were murmurs going around the room, and though they obviously discomforted Clint, he offered up a weak smile. “How do you know I can dance?” he asked.

“Don’t you even kid, I know you danced with the Queen of England once. I regularly hack SHIELD files, you know that,” Tony coaxed.

After a moment, Clint put his hand in Tony’s and Tony swept him onto the dance floor. By now, almost everyone’s attention was on the two of them, dressed in tuxedos and spinning about to the music. The team looked to be in various stages of shock, and the other dancers inched away, off the floor, until everyone was just watching the two of them dance closer and closer, hands clasped possessively, eyes only for each other.

Then Tony broke from the beat, dipped Clint down and grinned. “Are we boyfriends, Clint?”

“The fuck-? Do you even have to ask?” Clint responded, looking completely confused.

Tony yanked Clint back up and kissed him full on the mouth, one hand clasped with Clint’s, the other curled around Clint’s waist, holding him against Tony’s erection. Clint made a surprised sound and then Tony bit his lip, sucked on his tongue, and Clint relaxed into it with a moan, his free hand curling behind Tony’s neck.

They made front page, the team in general accepted them (well, Steve did, because Steve had been the only one with a problem before), Natasha looked murderous but backed off, Coulson had grudgingly given a nod at Tony last debriefing and never brought it up again, and Pepper nearly had a heart attack over the roller coaster ride Stark Industries’ stocks took.

So everything worked out.

(More or less.)


	2. Clint (and Natasha, and Phil [Coulson]) and the Progression of a Relationship

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Events from the first chapter, told from Clint's perspective.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BE WARNED. My headcanon for this 'verse is NOT NICE TO CLINT. There are references to self-harm, abuse of a minor, societal homophobia, homophobic slurs, and an abusive (non-SSC) relationship.
> 
> Also, further on, a sex scene with fisting. I don't even.
> 
> I hope this helps explain Clint's reactions, and explains Natasha to some extent. I don't intend to write more, but if there are still problems with characterization feel free to let me know and I'll explain via comments or the like the reasons for what I wrote and why I wrote it.
> 
> And this was thrown together hastily because I owe this chapter, so if there are any typos, general rambling passages... let me know so I can clean it up. o.o;;

_This is the story of Clinton Barton before the Avengers, sharp events that stand out, violent like Clint, like Clint’s life, like Clint’s loves. This is the story of Clinton Barton in snapshots that can flash before his eyes as he dies._

 

*

 

When Clint Barton is fourteen years old, he runs away from the circus, determined to leave behind a brother who would sell him out and a mentor that is more touchy-feely than Clint is comfortable with.

Living on the streets is harder than living in a circus and much harder than living in an orphanage. Sometimes, Clint wonders what his life would have been like if he hadn’t snuck out that window with Barney.

Wishing doesn’t fill his belly, though.

 

*

 

When Clint Barton is sixteen years old, he gets in trouble with some older boys on the street. He’s not without his ability and strength, however, even malnourished and skinny and short. They don’t beat him up too badly, but he finds the violence of it is a natural high he can’t explain.

When Clint takes a broken beer bottle from the street and slices his thigh, there is a feeling of floating, of going up so high he can’t see anyone anymore and nothing matters. He gets a feeling of intense sickness afterwards, however, one he hadn’t gotten from the fight. To test it out, he deliberately provokes another fight, and in his little hide-away-hole he presses a thumb against his broken nose, the hastily wrapped bandages, runs fingers over his wounds as if they were erogenous zones.

Of course, they _are_. Clint remembers words like ‘freak’ and ‘fag’ and ‘cocksucker’ and tries not to hear Barney’s voice in his head as he digs his thumb deeper into the gash on his belly.

He is largely unsuccessful.

He learns, through trial and error and random sexual encounters from johns, that self-infliction is a short high and hard crash. Other partners can and do bring a high that lasts longer, eases him down softer, and addicts him to their touch all the quicker. All in all, he makes some pretty fucking bad decisions when he’s floating.

 

*

 

When Clint Barton is seventeen years old, his luck runs out when he’s caught with a gun and standing in a gas station, and the system scoops him up. Or, from another point of view, his luck just begins.

The system hands him over to SHIELD.

 

*

 

His first handler can’t deal with a mouthy, shorty, smartass seventeen-year-old kid. Recommends that he be scrapped from the program, handed back over to the police, and his future is over. A guy named Phil Coulson – scary-ass motherfucker who keeps his face pleasant and his voice calm no matter the invectives Clint hurls or creative threats Clint verbalizes – explains all this to him while offering him a deal; if Clint does the training and sticks with SHIELD for seven years, he’ll have the option of joining the military or leaving to a private security firm at the end of those seven years.

Clint’s not an idiot, even considering that he left school long before fifth grade. He takes the deal.

 

*

 

When Clint Barton is eighteen years old, legal and proud, Coulson gives him the option to learn to drive a car – previously, Clint wasn’t allowed to leave SHIELD’s headquarters in NYC and while he’d learned the ins and outs of the air vents and support beams and hidey holes of the entire building, he’d never been out alone before (at least, not without Coulson dragging him back to HQ and making him take three hours on the rifle range). This is a chance for Clint to gain a measure of independence.

Clint, being Clint, bargains for a pilot’s license along with the car license – and gets them both.

 

*

 

When Clint is eighteen and a half he goes on his first mission, secures the objective but misjudges a hostile’s response. Later, he throws up in the jet’s bathroom, still seeing hostages burn alive in the backs of his eyelids. He pretends not to notice when strong, competent hands rest against his lower back and massage soothingly.

 

*

 

When Clint is eighteen and a half and four days, he descends into a dark club he’s only heard rumors about, and loses his BDSM virginity in the bathroom with scrapes on his knees, bruised lips, and reddened ass cheeks. He floats for the first time, flying on the pain, and there’s no crash, nothing but a smooth flight, deep relief.

Coulson is waiting outside the club with a car. He doesn’t ask questions, just thins his lips. When Coulson asks, a few days later, why Clint picked that establishment, that club, Clint tries to explain the feeling of a burn that lifts your mind higher, the feeling of aches and bruises that you press against to confirm to yourself it happened. He tries to explain pain.

Coulson gently suggests a psychologist. Clint doesn’t speak to Coulson for three months. He hides his wounds from Medical. He self-inflicts, a hobby rare in that he can never tell when it’s too much or too little and his crash is hard and fast. He shivers violently for one night before dodging his handler and sneaking out to another, rougher club.

In the end, Coulson promises to Clint that he’ll never bring it up again if Clint doesn’t hide the next time a sexual partner has broken Clint’s ribs.

 

*

 

Clint is twenty when he receives his first kill mission. This time he doesn’t throw up in the jet’s bathroom; he has waking nightmares, flashbacks so strong that for a week he refuses to sleep. It isn’t until Coulson let him sleep on the floor of Coulson’s office that Clint can snatch more than an hour of sleep at a time.

Ever since then, he has difficulty sleeping for more than three hours in a row.

 

*

 

Clint turns twenty-one and he’s legal for everything. Not that he _hadn’t_ gotten drunk before, but now Coulson can’t drag him back to SHIELD headquarters and give him a stringent lecture while giving him shit duties. Clint goes to a club that is primarily leather and chains, public humiliations and beatings, and he is so obviously out of his depth that it doesn’t take more than three minutes before two men come up on either side of him, leering at him. He knows he can fight them off, but what’s the etiquette here? Shivers go up his spine when he watches a girl attach nipple clamps to a guy at her feet, and he thinks maybe he wouldn’t want to be on the ground, but the nipple clamps are shiny, steel, glinting in the light, and the way the man bites his lip and whimpers only helps Clint imagine what it’d be like to have sharp metal pinch around his flesh.

Before his passivity allows the men to drag him out back, another man comes up, offers to take Clint home for the night. Clint is buzzed and ready, halfway to floating from watching everything around him.

 

This is the first time Clint is with an experienced sadist, and an experienced top, and the high he gets lingers for days after the session ended.

 

It will be his last considerate sadist for a long time.

 

*

 

Clint is twenty-three and has been in five different countries over the past fourteen months, mission after endless mission. It is in Nicaragua when he finally gets the chance to have a week’s worth of downtime before his next mission. He spends it in the back of a hut with a woman, and learns that there is a softer side to lovemaking he never knew of. It is not his favorite, and not particularly gripping, but when she is wrapped around him and breathes into his ear and whispers “ _yes, please, yes, my beauty_ ” in his ear, he has to admit that vanilla has its place and time.

His next mission is in Budapest, Hungary.

 

*

 

He remembers next to nothing about Budapest, Hungary.

 

*

 

He opens his eyes in Medical and sees Coulson sleeping in the chair nearby the bed. The date is four weeks after he landed in Budapest to track down a human trafficking ring.

Vaguely, he is aware of memories, but distantly – hands holding him down, a sharp prick in his neck, red hair flying in his vision and cool eyes looking at him distantly.

Later, when Coulson wakes up, he gives Clint the bare bones of what happens. When Clint prods for more, Coulson swallows hard and admits that a junior agent must have fucked up somewhere; the traffickers were expecting Clint. Within forty-eight hours they had captured and drugged Clint, and taken out his earpiece and mic. The only thing they didn’t remove was the tracker imbedded in Clint’s ribs from a procedure Coulson had forced Clint to go through with when he was twenty-two. The tracker was the only thing that told Coulson Clint was still alive.

“Who got me out?” Clint rasps, and Coulson shakes his head slowly, and spins this tale of a Russian woman who blew up a factory, who Clint had fought side by side with against the Rendorseg and the traffickers both and had come out with nary a scratch, with all the captives to boot.

“Who was she?”

“I was hoping you would tell me, Barton.”

 

*

 

Clint is twenty-five when he meets David.

Coulson asks him the first two weeks if he saw Medical for the bruises, the limping, the short, sharp, pained motions. After the third week, Coulson stops asking and just looks worried. Clint didn’t know how to explain his need for pain before, still doesn’t have the words or the vocabulary or eloquence, and so he does not try, and instead is thankful that at least David doesn’t look at him like a freak for what Clint needs.

 

*

 

At twenty-six, he’s given a mission – terminate a freelance assassin. Her next target is some important fat cat that Clint doesn’t care about or remember. What he remembers, though, is red hair in his dreams, small hands that were strong enough to lift him to his feet, a cool, impersonal voice that sneers at him, calls him weak until he hauls himself up to his feet and stumbles after a short, svelte form that disappears like smoke in the wind.

“Coulson, this is the chick that saved my life.”

Coulson doesn’t seem to get why that’s important – after all, even if they gave her a free pass, SHIELD would eventually send someone else to kill her. One way or another, she’s made too many enemies, has no one to turn to, no protection, no help.

“Just give me nine months. A year. Let me fix it.”

Coulson reminds him that he’s paid according to how many jobs he completes. That he has a boyfriend, rent, responsibilities.

“You gave a skinny, loud-mouthed seventeen-year-old a chance. She’s not that much older.”

Coulson warns him that if he does this, he’ll be on probation, and on probation Coulson will have to lend him out to other handlers, there will be repercussions, both he and she will be isolated, and specifically he will be kept away from her while SHIELD psychologists tear into her past with invasive needles and tug at what makes her tick with barbed wires.

“Please.”

 

*

 

When he comes back to SHIELD it is so much harder, and for the first time in a long time he can hear Barney’s voice in his head again.

_Freak._

 

*

 

David isn’t pleased he dropped off the face of the earth and suddenly showed up again in a club.

 

*

 

It isn’t until he’s twenty-seven that he’s allowed back on active missions. It isn’t until he’s twenty-seven and a half that he sees Natasha again.

“They treating you right?” he asks.

She hitches a shoulder. He understands. Why complain about what can’t be changed?

 

*

 

A mission takes him away for two weeks. He tells David this time that his work is sending him overseas. When he comes back, he debriefs and then shows up at David’s apartment. In all their past together, David’s never been gentle, not like the elderly gentleman that one night, back when Clint was twenty-one and fresh-faced. He’s come to accept that that encounter was an outlier, an anomaly. People who like giving pain aren’t like that. Clint’s experiences in clubs and with David have proven that.

Still, he’s floating, flying, when a second set of hands joins David’s. And as much as he’s resigned himself to hiding bruises, cuts, stitches, sprains – he never signed up for polyandry. He fights the chains for the first time in his life, regardless of the wounds he already has from the session. He’s an assassin, he knows how to get free, but in the time it _takes_ for him to get free they both rough him up badly enough that he knows he can’t get home on his own.

Broken, bleeding on the pavement outside David’s apartment, trying to block out David’s cruel words and predictions, Clint doesn’t know who to call. Coulson’s out on mission. Natasha’s not allowed to leave SHIELD headquarters yet.

But Clint knows what it means when he breathes in and there’s a crackling noise in his airways, when he breathes in but _doesn’t get air_ , when he can’t focus his eyes, when he feels cold. He has to call someone. And, well, Natasha’s a better assassin than he himself; surely she can slip out from watch and drop him off in an emergency room somewhere?

 

*

 

Once more there are swift, competent hands at his shoulders, lifting him up off the ground. Once more, he leans his head against her shoulder and wishes he wasn’t such a freak.

 

*

 

“What happened?”

Her accent is slowly disappearing. She is trying to blend in, lose the quirk completely, but he will miss that foreign hint in her words, miss the reminder of her strength and capability and roots.

“It’s nothing,” he whispers around the oxygen mask.

“Was it SHIELD? For bringing me in?”

He shakes his head no.

“A rival? A new player in town?”

He sighs. “No, Nats.”

She shifts uncomfortably in the chair by the bed, looking confused. “Who hurt you?”

He thinks of Natasha like a little sister, which makes it doubly hard to try and explain. “It’s not their fault, Nats,” he finally croaks. “I asked for it. I… like it.”

Her brow wrinkles, and she leans forward a little, trying to understand. “This is American thing?”

“No,” he sighs, closing his eyes. “This is a freak thing.”

 

*

 

It takes him three months to recover fully. Who knew punctured lungs, a cracked skull, and a shattered kneecap took so long, huh?

Who knew.

 

*

 

“I haven’t ever mentioned it before, Barton.”

“I’d prefer that doesn’t change, actually.”

“You were in Medical for two months, off-duty for another month. This is dangerous. Isn’t there a way to make it safe?”

“Maybe I don’t like it safe.”

“Is there another way to – to get what you need without involving—”

There is a long silence. Clint’s not going to make it easy on Coulson, not when Coulson’s prying in his private life, and Coulson knows that objectively. At least, Clint hopes he knows that’s why he’s not giving him anything to go on.

“Is there a way to have safety nets?”

 _That’s not how I fly_ , Clint thinks, but he nods and mouths the correct words, gets psych evals back that state he has a need to punish himself and it’s all in his head, that he just needs affirmation he’s good enough and the addiction to floating will go away.

Clint doesn’t want it to go away. But he doesn’t tell them that.

 

*

 

When Clint is thirty-one, he’s sent to New Mexico.

 

*

 

When Clint is two months shy of thirty-two, Natasha’s sent to infiltrate Stark Industries.

 

*

 

When Clint is thirty-three and a half, he is stabbed in the chest with a spear and everything disappears except _obedience_.

 

*

 

When Clint is thirty-three and a half, plus three weeks, his vision comes back in the service area of the helicarrier, emergency lights blinking, yellow railing and metal catwalk, and red hair in front of him, those eyes dispassionate and cool. “Natasha?” he slurs, feeling as if he’d been stomped on by a rhino.

Natasha punches him in the nose and everything disappears again.

 

*

 

“Do you know what it’s like to be unmade?” he whispers.

“You know I do.”

And he does. He’s the one that brought her back to be unmade by SHIELD, built back up in their image. He’s the one that witnessed the first breaking of her training, when he holed up with her and wouldn’t let her kill herself or him.

But that’s not what he means. That’s not what he’s thinking about. What he’s thinking about is different, is a systematic _loss_ , every defining characteristic that made him _him_ lost to the void, to a blue light that smothered his thoughts, his breaths, his heart and soul.

 _You have heart_ , Loki whispered to him when the staff came down onto his heart, and Clint shivers hard in the restraints, shakes his head and blinks to clear his vision, because for a while…

_…he didn’t._

 

*

 

_But Clinton Barton, once a carnie, a thief, hired muscle, a SHIELD agent, now a member of the Avengers – Clint Barton is not dying. Not today._

_Though it was close, this time._

 

*

 

It was the beeping that woke Clint. He knew those types of beeps from both times past and not too long ago, from multiple times in Medical, and he mentally groaned as he blinked open his eyes.

He was lying on a nice bed, though, not the harsh hospital ones he could remember on the helicarrier’s Med-Bay. There was soft light, not the harsh lights of artificial lighting; light coming from the window, actually, through sheer curtains.

When did a hospital get—

“Mr. Barton, if you are feeling any ill effects at the moment, there are painkillers to your left. I have alerted Dr. Banner that you have awoken; he is on his way to your room as we speak.”

The mechanical voice of Tony’s AI, JARVIS, made Clint startle and then hiss in shock, forcing everything to lay still. “JARVIS? What happened?” he asked, and then immediately began coughing, unable to speak past the hoarseness in his throat.

“You keep thinking you can fly,” came a soft voice from the doorway, and Clint tilted his head to see Bruce standing there, smiling weakly. “Nearly died this time, Clint.”

“Yeah,” Clint croaked, hissing a little when Bruce came over and pulled down the sheet to touch cold fingers to his chest. “I got that. What’s the damage?”

With a sigh, Bruce removed his hand and looked at the bandages on his chest. “I’d say normally, at least a month on strict bed-rest, another two to four for physical therapy for that broken femur. But Natasha tells me that you’re a sturdy one, and don’t like staying down for long. So we’ll take it day by day. Still got at least a month before you can even be considered on mild duty, though.”

Clint licked his lips and looked around. “Tony?” he asked, because they had started ‘officially’ dating about a week and a half ago, had had sex only once, and yeah, he constantly had Natasha and Coulson warning him that Tony was fickle, had no long-lasting relationships, the only person who really could stand Tony had left because he was too much of a handful, and they didn’t want to see Clint waste his life on such an idiot—but Clint was steadfastly ignoring them all. In fact, he was ignoring Natasha entirely; that stunt in the kitchen was well-intended, he knew, but she was younger than him and he could take care of himself. Besides, as long as he kept his eyes open and himself disengaged, he wouldn’t get wrapped up in Tony the way he had with—

Well. The way he had before.

“Tony’s in Italy at the moment; you weren’t supposed to come out of the medicine-induced coma until tomorrow, and he gets back in…” Bruce looked at the clock. “In about two hours, give or take. He’s been by your side most of the time. He was the one who caught you.”

Clint looked down at his broken leg and wrapped ribs and the cast on his arm. “Caught me?” he asked, because he’d seriously thought he’d landed badly, which caused the leg.

Bruce took a deep breath and Clint bit his lip – they had all grown intimately familiar with how Bruce kept the other guy calm – but when Bruce spoke, there was no green in his skin or eyes. “Clint, you fell from the top of a twenty-five story building. If you had landed… you would have died. Not just have a broken leg. Unfortunately, the top of the building was falling with you, and a chunk of it hit you before Tony could fly in and get you. You’ve been out two weeks, by the way – you had a cranial bleed that required emergency surgery. Tony got you moved back to the tower yesterday, when the doctors agreed that the worst was past.”

_Two freaking weeks?_

Clint’s eyes must have shown his absolute panic at that, because Bruce immediately put a hand on Clint’s chest and patted lightly. “No, it’s alright. Nothing major’s happened, it’s just – you gave everyone a good scare, Clint. You’re an important part of the team, and we’ve all taken this… pretty hard. Tony especially. But it was a medical coma, and everyone was fairly positive you’d wake up fine.”

Clint wasn’t certain that was actually helpful in any way, but Bruce didn’t seem to notice. Instead, he placed a remote control in Clint’s hand, moved a bowl to rest next to Clint’s good hand, and patted his shoulder gently.

“Natasha will probably be up here momentarily, as well as Coulson, but for right now, you are not to move from this bed. There are ice chips here by your side, and I’m going to go make some light soup for you. Tony will probably whirl in here soon enough. And JARVIS will keep an eye on you and alert us if you need assistance in any way, so don’t hesitate to utilize that. Probably the only time JARVIS will be at the complete disposal of anyone else besides Tony.” Smiling, Bruce stood up and exited the room.

Clint sighed. The thing he hated most about being injured was the absolute _pain_ of waiting to be back at full strength.

“Dr. Banner is correct, Mr. Barton – I am at your full disposal during your recovery period. If you desire anything, simply direct your request to myself and I will do my utmost to fulfill your request.”

Clint sighed – asking JARVIS to call him Clint instead of Mr. Baton had been a losing battle so far, and there was no reason to ask again – and simply replied, “Thanks, Jarvs, but I think I’m fine. Nats on her way up here?”

“Yes, Mr. Barton. Shall I prevent her entrance?”

There was a noted coolness in JARVIS’s inhuman tone, and Clint knew why. He couldn’t even really blame JARVIS at all, considering Nats’ reaction to realizing Tony had not only slept with Clint, but had marked Clint up. Clint had taken Natasha to the gym and proceeded to give her the hardest workout he could manage to give her, and had managed to hold his own and even pin her for two heartbeats a minimum of five different times. Tony had obviously not believed Clint when Clint insisted that he hadn’t set Natasha on him, and JARVIS was notoriously protective of his creator. It. _Its_ creator.

Though Clint would swear the AI had a distinct personality and deserved to be referred to by human pronouns like everyone else.

Shaking his head slightly, Clint picked up an ice chip and twisted his good arm carefully to bring it to his mouth. “No, it’s okay, Jarvs, she’s cool.”

“Very well,” JARVIS said, and he sounded genuinely unhappy with the negative answer.

Before Clint could comment on that – before Clint could decide whether he _wanted_ to comment on that or leave it the fuck alone – the door opened and Natasha slipped into the room. Anyone else would think she was composed, poised, but Clint could see the lines of panic around her eyes, the emotions that swam in the back of her eyes, the way her eyes lingered over every bandage, every dip in the blankets.

“You seem fine,” she murmured, coming to the edge of the bed and sitting down lightly. Poised. Always poised, ready to fly, ready to attack. His little sister.

Smiling tiredly, he responded, “Should be up on my feet soon enough.”

After a long moment, she nodded. Another long moment passed with her just sitting there and Clint doing his best not to fall back asleep.

“You like him.”

It took Clint a minute to figure out what she was hinting at, and then he sighed. “Yeah, I do, Nats. He’s… he’s not that different from me, once you dig deeper.”

Her fingers tapped restlessly against her thigh – _silently_ against her thigh, as well, because Natasha was nothing if not thorough in her ability to remain alert in all situations – and Clint watched them drowsily a minute.

Heaving a soft sigh, she stilled her fingers and moved the hand closest to Clint to rest gently against his shoulder. “You once tried to explain what you meant, when you said you flew. I don’t think I understood – no. I did not understand what you meant. I still don’t. I don’t like that you let him hurt you, when you deserve so much more. And then you defend him to me, you don’t let me scare him off, you actively encourage him… and I can’t see why you don’t pick someone else. Someone… nicer.”

Clint really wasn’t in a good place to have a heart-to-heart relationship talk at the moment, but considering that Tony was still pissy over the fact that Clint hadn’t chastised Natasha more in front of him, and that JARVIS had taken to locking all the doors Natasha closed, requiring her to reenter her passcode even if it was as simple as closing the door to the bathroom behind her, well… Clint needed to get it clear that he was and would take care of himself. This wasn’t like David, he was certain.

“Nats. Pain to you was – that’s how they taught you lessons. But that’s not me. I don’t – pain for me is an escape, in a way. It’s… it’s letting go, trusting your partner, having a sharpness in bed that is thrilling and I just… I don’t know how to explain it. But I trust Tony. Hell, you trust Tony too, as much as you pretend you don’t and as much as he thinks you don’t. You know he wouldn’t really hurt me.”

“That doesn’t _matter_ , Clint,” she said, voice suddenly heated, and her fingers tightened minutely against his shoulder. “He would try _not to_. But you – I’ve seen it. Even in the hospital, even as you were on bed-rest for two months after that one relationship, you kept on saying you asked for it, that he didn’t do anything you didn’t like, but you were in _pain_. There is a difference between pain for pleasure and pain for _pain_ and I don’t think you can draw that line easily. I don’t trust Tony to draw that line, either. And he won’t mean to, and you won’t mean to, but one day I’ll have to set a broken bone or ribs or break into Tony’s bedroom and take you back to Medical and it will be because you two don’t _plan_. You are right; you’re similar. You jump in with both feet. You don’t look before jumping. You don’t consider plans. And that can be dangerous. That _has_ proved dangerous in various other ways.”

Weakly, he lifted his good hand to cover hers. “That’s for experiments. That’s for pranks, for fun, for battle. When it comes to the bedroom – he didn’t do anything at all, okay? I’ve only slept with him the once. I can’t guarantee it long-term. But he didn’t do anything that you wouldn’t find outside of – outside of rougher vanilla. It was – biting, and dirty talk. Gripping tight enough to leave the bruises you saw – and I left marks on him, too. It was – he was _hinting_ that it could go in another way, even though it never did. Alright? He seems to know his way around it, and I’ve been around a while now, and I’ve learned what makes things good and what doesn’t. We’ll figure it out together, but we deserve to get the chance to do that. We don’t need you interfering. Or you, Phil.”

Coulson had stepped into the room in the middle of Natasha’s outburst, and he simply folded his arms. Natasha just sighed and tapped the tip of one finger against his shoulder before standing up.

“Okay? Guys? I want this. I don’t know how to say it any clearer. _I want this_. I don’t want Tony freaking out because you’re pulling a knife on him, Natasha—”

“It wasn’t real,” she said indignantly.

“He thought it was. And those _were_ your Widow’s Bites. And you did elbow him. And you, sir. Phil. You need to stop sending spy cameras into his room and using that to freak him out. You’ll see if it gets bad and interrupt. Hell, you could probably even get Thor or Steve to tell Tony to back off, if it comes down to that. But I am thirty-fucking-three years old and I’ll sleep with whoever I goddamned want to. Okay?”

Both of them nodded, and Natasha left the room. Phil hovered a moment longer before moving over to the edge of the bed with a sigh.

“Your impassioned speech has both worn you out and was unnecessary,” Phil murmured. “Your chosen lover—”

“Friend. Or. Friend with benefits,” Clint interjected, a little bitterly, because yeah, okay, Tony had just had Natasha threaten his life, but he had just acquiesced to ‘just sex’ like it was a relief.

Phil sighed. “Lover. You didn’t see him these past weeks. He is deeply attached to you. In fact, I’m surprised he’s not here; he was in the Med-Bay constantly while you were in your induced coma.”

“That doesn’t mean we’re lovers, Phil. If he won’t even say the words…” Clint trailed off, turning his head away.

“Hmm.” Phil placed a stack of paperwork and a pen on the night table. “If you’re going to be stubborn about it, then. Natasha was right to draw parallels between you. I brought paperwork for you to complete, since you’re going to be on bed-rest. Might as well get it done.” Standing up, he inclined his head to Clint. “I’m glad you’re not dead. The paperwork would’ve been a nightmare, and I don’t think I’d have been able to console your lover.”

 

*

 

Phil continued to refer to Tony as Clint’s ‘lover’ when not in Tony’s earshot. It made something nervous jump in Clint’s chest, and he looked carefully at Tony’s interaction with him.

He had to admit, it really was kinda boyfriend-y.

After all, Tony had given Clint unlimited access to the workshop, something that no one else had. Tony had taken to appropriating some of Clint’s things, and had begun leaving things in Clint’s room. He’d been highly attentive while Clint had been recovering. He’d given Clint nearly unlimited access to JARVIS. He’d taken to calling Clint pet names and nicknames and somehow managed to draw the line between too much and too little pain in bed.

Hell, he’d managed to have some _vanilla_ sex with Clint and managed to make Clint _like it_.

If that didn’t say something about Tony’s regard for Clint, well…

Still, Tony never publically said anything. The first charity thing that Clint had been to after he’d recovered enough from the wound, Tony had draped an arm around Clint’s shoulders and hung on him, which just undermined what Clint had been saying moments ago. Tony was very tactile – heck, they both were – but Tony seemed to want to touch Clint _all the freaking time_ now, and for someone who’d never been touched this much in his _life_ it was a lot overwhelming. Cling had taken to ducking away from Tony’s touches in public. In private, when it was just him and Tony – or even if it was just Bruce or Steve or Thor in the room, because Natasha would give him a smug look and Phil would mouth ‘lover’ and Jane or Darcy would inevitably start talking about cuteness levels – he could take it. Hell, he _wanted_ it. Gentle, honest affection was something he’d never had before.

And then, three months into dating, Tony had bought Clint a car. No, you couldn’t really call that ‘a car’. It was a fucking Hennessy Venom GT. It was easily a one million dollar car, for a guy who was more comfortable flying than driving and for someone who rarely – if ever – actually drove a car.

It had felt – dirty. Like Tony was treating him like a socialite girl, someone that needed gifts and trinkets and fucking expensive shit to hang around. And, well, Clint didn’t need Tony buying extravagant shit on him. In fact, Tony actually making an effort to forgive Natasha would go a lot longer towards making Clint more affectionate than handing him expensive jewels or diamonds. Clint wasn’t someone that could be bought and paid for, and it was insulting.

Tony had pouted, had been sharply sarcastic and pointed for a week afterwards, but he hadn’t stopped trying to be physically affectionate. He hadn’t withheld sex. He never once chastised Clint for leaving Tony’s bed before morning. Tony easily agreed to the sex they shared, and he never pushed for it to move past the sex-based relationship.

Clint didn’t like it, though. He was beginning to regret taking the safe route at the start of this; not wanting to jump the gun and call it a relationship apparently made Tony completely comfortable with it being nothing but sex.

Though it was clear Tony was upset with _something_ and Clint wasn’t well-versed enough in relationship to figure out what. He didn’t exactly want to say straight out, ‘hey, when I was a stupid eighteen year old I started a relationship with one guy and he woke me up every morning with sex whether I wanted it or not and it took me a few weeks before I worked up enough courage to break it off.’ He didn’t want to explain, ‘I prefer to work out in the morning, get an early start, and don’t sleep in until ten or eleven like you do on a regular basis.’ He didn’t want to explain that he’d had only one serious relationship (he didn’t count the casual sex he’d had with multiple partners, the few ‘boyfriends’ and ‘girlfriends’ who he’d used as booty calls during downtime) with David – and David had treated him like property, had disregarded Clint’s pleasure multiple times, had in general objectified him in public.

Still, he was getting used to the nicknames and pet names. Hell, he _liked_ them in bed, and in the private of the Avengers’ tower. In public, though… he hated having to explain himself to interns, hated having the staff on the helicarrier look at him sideways (it reminded him too much of Barney’s judgmental looks, too much of the way the other carnies would look at him) – but even now, it wasn’t that bad anymore. Clint was getting used to it. Tony was… in a way, _normalizing_ it for him. Clint did his best to give back; he brought Tony food, made sure he ate. He took Tony to movies, taught him dirty fighting techniques. And they both ventured deeper into BDSM as they grew more comfortable with one another, and Clint grew better at both verbalizing when he was comfortable with something and when he was _not_ comfortable with something.

But serious emotional talks? Clint was shit at them even before he was an orphan.

“When are you going to dump him?” Natasha asked one day after a particularly hard training session.

Clint sighed and rubbed the back of his neck, only partially because it was sore from one of Natasha’s infamous thigh-holds.

Natasha, being Natasha, picked up on his embarrassment, and her eyes narrowed. “He’s not good enough for you. You deserve better than someone who has a long list of broken hearts behind him.”

“Oh yeah? I don’t make mention to you about the different people _you_ date. Why don’t you ever settle down with someone, huh? Why don’t I get to vet your choices like you vet mine?” Clint snarled, anger burning in his belly because that was a real fear, that Tony never corrected Clint’s ‘just sex’ line because that really _was_ all it was for Tony, that Tony was with Clint because Clint was a sure thing, that if Tony cut back on his duties with the Avengers he might drop Clint. That Tony wasn’t as committed to the relationship as Clint. To have Natasha bring it up in his face—

“I don’t vet your choices,” Natasha muttered, and there was a tightness around her eyes that meant she was sulking. “I just – want you to have someone good. Want you to have someone who will love you back.”

“Who says I love him?” Clint retorted challengingly.

Natasha gave him one of her patented ‘oh, _please_ ,’ looks that normally had Clint squirming uncomfortably, but as of right now he was pissed off enough at her to disregard it. “I don’t see it, at least, and doesn’t the person in the relationship have to actually feel it for it to be present?”

“Not if they’re an idiot like you,” Natasha muttered, picking up the miscellaneous equipment. She didn’t say anything beyond that, and so Clint just as pointedly ignored her for all of five minutes. Strangely enough, though, _she_ broke the silence, not him. “I just – it’s been about seven months, Clint. You don’t stay with someone that long if you don’t love them. And speaking from experience, you are shit at keeping your heart from getting involved, even if you started out trying to protect yourself from falling in love. It didn’t work.”

Clint opened his mouth to reply, just as Thor came in the door and blinked. “Ah, are you near completion of your daily exercise?” he asked.

Natasha glanced at Clint, and then nodded. “We’re done, Thor. Why? Normally you don’t spar alone; is Steve back from his meeting with Fury?”

“No, I merely wondered why I saw Tony leaving so quickly from here, but perhaps you were focused on your physical exertions. Certainly, he told me not to bother you, though the schedule indicates your session should be over and I should be able to make use of the facility.”

Natasha answered Thor, but all Clint could think of was the idea of Tony coming down and overhearing parts of their conversation, or even all of the conversation, and _shit_.

 

*

 

“You’re scaring him off, you know,” Coulson told him ten days later, after a particularly grueling terrorist situation where Clint had been called in specifically to deal with recovering hostages. “He thinks you’re not serious about it.”

Clint looked up from where he’d been packing up his bow and remaining arrows. “He tell you that, sir?” he asked, voice clipped. He was _not_ in the mood, not after what he’d just done and Tony starting to act really awkward around him. He was – he had stopped giving Clint nicknames, stopped leading in bed. He was growing more absent when they were intimate, was looking at Clint sideways when they were in public as if Clint wouldn’t notice.

“No. But I’ve been around Stark a while. And I’m a pretty good judge of character. Got you right, didn’t I?”

Instead of answering the soft-meaning jibe, Clint snapped the lid closed and stood up.

Coulson sighed. “You keep on saying it’s ‘just sex,’ Clint, and you’re not sounding any more convincing now as you did at the beginning of all of this.”

“Are you ordering me to discuss my feelings with Tony?” Clint asked, challenging, and Phil gave him a long, measured look before shaking his head.

“No. I’m not. I’m merely remarking that it might do you some good to start referring it in different terms,” Coulson murmured. “He’s different in the way that you’re different, and he isn’t meeting you in the middle precisely because he thinks you don’t want him to.”

Clint stalked away, snarling, “Unless he said that directly to you, sir, _back the fuck off_.”

Phil didn’t follow him, which was best considering that Clint was trying to work out what was going on. In the past couple of days, since that conversation with Nats about Clint being too attached, Clint had been taking a hard look at their relationship.

The thing is, Clint really hadn’t expected it to go on this long. He’d assumed, reading Nats’s initial report on Tony, about whether Iron Man should have been included in the Avengers, that Tony was self-centered. After listening to Phil complain about Tony (Stark, as he’d been back then), that belief had only been cemented. Even after the battle, after watching Tony direct the bomb into the portal – he respected Tony as a good man, a good partner, but he would never be a soldier. Being in SHIELD had given Clint something to adhere to, respect, and give him boundaries. Being in SHIELD only pissed Tony off and he butted heads with Steve, with Fury, with Coulson, shit, even with Thor at times, when Thor was taking Fury’s side.

So when Clint had found Tony doing his best to drink himself to his grave, Clint had hesitated. As much as it saddens him to admit to himself, now that he knows Tony a lot more, he had almost walked past the kitchen back then, had almost headed to his room. Thankfully, though, he had seen Tony determinedly emptying a bottle of vodka and remembered… well, no one could have missed the signs that Tony and Pepper had been on the rocks, and it looked like Tony had just been dumped, or had dumped her. So Clint had guessed something bad had gone down and had remembered his depression, his sick search for one-night stands that could give him what David had given him, even if he hadn’t actually enjoyed David beyond the sex aspect of the relationship.

That night had turned their whole relationship into something that was friendly, two loudmouth short-asses who were used to being underestimated and determined to make sure no one ever did so again. They pranked one another, they argued, they poked fun in the field, dared one another to do more and more over-the-top things. And Clint hadn’t wanted to lose that camaraderie, even when he noticed they were doing ‘date-things’, as Natasha had brought up one afternoon. He may have implied to her he wouldn’t have minded if Tony had moved it into real dates, but when Tony had actually said the words, asked for Clint’s opinion…

And now, now with Tony acting so strange, with Natasha admitting that Tony had never stayed with anyone for as long as he had stayed with Clint, but the fact that Tony was no longer giving Clint nicknames or draping himself over Clint at meetings might mean Tony was losing interest… now, Clint didn’t know whether to believe Coulson, _Phil_ , the handler who didn’t completely understand Clint but tried his best to give Clint the space Clint needed, or Natasha, his little sister, the woman who would die for him and who he’d die for. He didn’t know whether to tell Steve that he was happy with how everything was going. Hell, he knew Tony had been asked by the whole team about his intentions to Clint, and it would be insulting, almost, if not for the fact that every press conference they did as Avengers had one reporter asking Tony about his numerous past conquests and insinuating that he was sleeping with the entire team. Only Thor and Bruce really didn’t seem to care all that much, beyond making sure Clint was happy and, yes, asking if Tony was happy too.

He’d just gone in a big circle, he had no idea where his brain was going or why it was going that way, and he let out a harsh sigh, leaning against the wall outside his quarters on the helicarrier.

He just had to man up and actually ask Tony. He needed to initiate the discussion, because Tony’d been pretty good about not touching subjects Clint didn’t want to touch until Clint indicated he was ready to talk about them.

 

*

 

Of course, when he finally got enough steel in his spine to go and talk to Tony, he couldn’t _find_ him.

 

*

 

“Tony? He’s in the middle of overseeing a project. I think he spends most of his time at the Stark Building in Miami and in Hong Kong, but he should be on his way back here, actualy. Soon enough, at least. Did you want me to get a message to him?” Pepper asked.

“No, no, that’s fine,” Clint mumbled, slinking out of the living room. It was highly embarrassing to have to go to your sorta-boyfriend’s ex to get in touch with him, but he hadn’t seen Tony for about three days now and it was rare that Tony went on any kind of business-related trip for more than a day or two.

“Pining?”

“Shut up, Nats,” Clint muttered, moving past Natasha and making his way to the gym.

Of course, that just meant that Natasha followed him to the gym. Trying to put her out of his mind, he called up the boxing robot Tony had designed with Thor and Steve in mind, able to take god-like punches and return them with equal ferocity. It had been a crowning achievement of Bruce and Tony’s combined scientific endeavors and most of the time, Clint didn’t bother with it – punching bags worked well enough for him. Now, though, he wanted a limited AI that would adapt to his moves and give him a real workout that would allow him to go full-throttle, nothing held back, no thinking required.

“I could spar with you,” she offered, but he ignored it in order to power up the boxing robot and tie the boxing gloves on.

She didn’t take offense at his refusal to answer; instead, she perched on one of the posts, one leg swinging, as he and the robot went at it, vicious and dirty and fast. The boxing robot, perhaps because it was before Clint had taken Tony and taught him the rougher side of fighting, had a certain form that it followed, small weaknesses that Clint knew were randomized in order to help the Avengers get better at noticing what movements indicated what weaknesses on opponents. Clint threw himself into the fight and let his mind float above, taking the punches and almost enjoying the pain. Well, no ‘almost’ about it – but it had been a long time since Clint had needed to rely on fights to give him the high his body craved.

“You miss him.”

Natasha’s voice came from far away, and he did nothing more than grunt at that.

“You know, I keep trying to see it in my mind. You, and him. And I think part of the reason is from the extensive research I did on him… he never once kept any long-term male lovers. They were flings, just fun for him.”

Clint punched harder at the robot, rolled under the robot’s legs and kicked with both legs to knock the robot off balance, trying to block out Natasha’s voice.

“And when he stuck around with you – well, I figured it was because he was on a dry spell. He wouldn’t keep it up. He’d screw up, mess it up, and you’d see he’s not a reliable person to be around. He’d flirt with someone at a gala, and Steve would lecture him about playing with your heart. He’d be casual, and everyone would recognize that this was not good for team dynamics, for two people to be involved while on the same team. It’s bad for team cohesion, it’s bad overall for team interpersonal relationships, it’s just not a good idea.”

The robot slammed a fist into Clint’s side and he grunted, went down on one knee and pushed up hard into the robot’s midsection, making it stumble backwards.

“Of everyone in SHIELD, you were the person I looked up to because you never backed down from fights. You took the suicidal missions, did the worst runs, had the record for most missions taken in a row without downtime. Later, when you tried to explain pain to me, I… was upset at you, a little. You didn’t do this because you were brave. You weren’t the hero who was looking to save an angry, brainwashed teen from Russian masters. You were a guy who ran out there because he was a goddamn adrenaline junkie.”

Clint froze, and the AI immediately paused, fist inches away from Clint’s temple. Clint couldn’t care less, though; he twisted around to stare at Natasha in shock.

She wasn’t looking at him anymore; she was looking over at the wall where the sparring mats were. “Of course, that lasted for little more than a few weeks. After all, adrenaline junkie doesn’t explain saving me, or giving up your position in SHIELD to bring me in. Adrenaline junkie doesn’t explain… gestures I had yet to understand. So. Not adrenaline junkie, or not _just_ an adrenaline junkie. I had to think a lot about you, Clint, and that frustrated me, because besides Coulson everyone was straightforward, and I expected the handler who had you would be complicated. I didn’t expect _you_ to be as complicated.”

“Nats…” he started, and trailed off, unsure about where he was going with his words and unsure what to say to her.

She took in a deep breath and hopped off of the post, meeting his gaze, and there was something akin to resigned acceptance in her eyes. “I know you more than anyone, I would argue. Even more than Coulson, in some ways, because of Budapest.”

Clint opened his mouth, but she shook her head, shutting him down – now wasn’t the time to have anything explained or debated. “You want him. You miss him when he’s not here. He hurts you, and I see the bruises, but you don’t limp anymore. You don’t curl around your ribs when you come back from his rooms. You don’t have any of the signs you had with your partners before, and maybe that makes it easier for me to accept. But you need to speak up first, because if there’s one thing I noticed about Tony Stark when I was with him, it was he has no concept of social interactions whatsoever and takes his cues from everyone around him. If you don’t spell things out for him, Clint, he won’t get it.”

Clint flexed his hands in the boxing gloves a moment and then let his stance go loose. “You mean all of that, Natasha?”

“Even if I don’t, you can’t tell at all,” she points out. “I mean the part about your happiness, though. And whether I agree with Stark as a long-term romantic partner isn’t the issue here; it’s whether _you_ think he’s worthy of being a long-term romantic partner.”

 

*

 

Tony got back late enough that Clint didn’t see him come in. And then Tony was back out the next day, at his office, and the day after that, and the day after that. Tony gave him distracted kisses in the morning and nothing more; Tony was very careful to call Clint by his first name only; Tony was less enthusiastic in bed and less forceful. Clint wasn’t sure what to take away from that and finally, guiltily, decided the only way he’d be able to actually snag Tony was when Tony was busy in the lab.

Of course, with the couple of days that Tony had had, he wasn’t exactly at his sharpest. Clint beat back an instinctive worry about dark eyes and slurred voice and pushed forward because sometimes, if he was lucky, Tony was at his most truthful when like this.

“What’s going on?” he repeated a second time. “What’s up with you?”

“What’s up with _me_?” Tony asked, as if it wasn’t _his_ behavior that had changed suddenly, leaving Clint floundering for an explanation. “Nothing’s up with me. Everything’s perfect. Great. Why, is something up with _you_?”

Clint bit his lip, tried to steel himself to explain that he wanted – more, he wanted a committed relationship, he wanted Tony to stop accepting Clint’s bullshit line about this being ‘just sex’ and ask him for more.

He chickened out, of course. No one could ever claim that Clint was adept at handling emotions or social interactions.

“You’re – you’re acting different. Not like you.” And then Clint paused, because this was what he was afraid of most, and he ventured, “You trying to break up or something?”

Tony licked his lips, and there was a strange look in his eyes even as he responded, “I wasn’t aware that there was something to break up in the first place.”

Clint went cold because – okay, yeah, it was ‘just sex’, but the fact that Tony didn’t see anything there, that whatever they had couldn’t be broken up because it didn’t _exist_ – Clint was used to people feeling less connected emotionally to him than he was to them, but it still managed to hurt him every single time and Clint reacted instinctively, lashing out. “Yeah, there’s nothing there at all, is there?” he sneered, hands clenched tight enough that his nails cut into the meat of his palm. “Just sex, right?” Tony never denied it, and instead Tony perpetuated it, never did anything to change it. Hell, he did everything else, acted like they were a couple, but when it came to that fiction between them, when it came down to those three words…

Tony snapped back just as quickly, “Hey, I’m not the one that said that, okay? Don’t pin that on me.”

Clint flinched and half-turned away as he tried to regulate his breathing.  “You never said it was wrong!” he forced out. “You never said it was anything different!” _I was waiting for you to say something_ was something too weak to say, something a pussy would say, and he never should have expected Tony to hear those words because Tony never noticed things that people didn’t shove in his face with blinking neon lights.

And, true enough, Tony stood up, shoulders squared aggressively. “Because you hate anything more than ‘just sex’!” he shouted, one hand snapping out in a frustrated motion. “I’d try and you’d ignore me and then Natasha would show up and I wouldn’t even have a chance!”

Clint didn’t want Natasha dragged into this, knew that she hadn’t been kind to Tony over this for very good reasons that he didn’t want to share because some things were still too private, too bottled up. Instead, he launched onto the offense, determined to be as sharp as Tony. “Maybe Nats was right,” he sneered, taking half a step back and away from Tony as Tony grew more and more angry and confrontational. “It’s just gratification with you, isn’t it? Just good sex, like having someone to fuck, don’t you? Needed a pity lay to get back on the horse after Pepper?”

Tony visibly paled, and for a moment Clint took half a step forward again, reaching as if to go to Tony’s side, but then Tony went flush with rage, eyes snapping and Clint was thrown back in time at other partners, other anger. “You know it wasn’t that, Clint,” Tony snarled, and it was almost an alien sound, Tony had so rarely ever gotten really mad with Clint. “If anything, I had to pick at _you_ to get you to – to agree to this! You’re the one acting like this is – this is nothing, I shouldn’t worry about the fact that the _whole fucking team_ has informed me what will happen if I screw up and do something and I haven’t even _done_ anything yet!”

Arms folded to hide the trembling in his hands and head dropped low to hide his fear, Clint couldn’t think rationally about this anymore, couldn’t handle it. He’d come in trying to ask Tony why Tony wouldn’t suggest why they couldn’t move past the ‘just sex’ thing and now it sounded like – like Tony had done Clint a big favor for accepting him as a bed partner. “Well, you sure as fuck have now,” he growled back, voice rough to hide the shakiness, and Clint turned on his heel and walked as fast as he could away.

“What do I have to do?”

Clint paused with one hand on the door, and he should just go, he should curl up somewhere and – fucking write out what he wanted to say. Practice saying it in the mirror, and then see if Tony would give him a second chance.

But Tony’s voice sounded wrecked, and Clint – Clint _knew_ he was difficult to deal with, horrible to deal with, _freak_ whispered in the back of his mind – so Clint swallowed and said softly, “What?”

“What more do I have to fucking _do_?” Tony said, and his voice was so tired. “I did everything I was supposed to, I tried to treat you better, I followed all the warnings and didn’t mess with you and _I thought it was working just fine—_ ”

Tony cut himself off, and for the first time… the first time, Clint realized that for all he knew Tony, he forgot how Tony projected strength and confidence and assurance, and Tony was just as messed up in the head as Clint, though in different ways. That thought made it easier for Clint to still the trembling in his hands, shove his memories back behind a door in his head.

“Fuck it,” Tony mumbled, and when Clint turned around Tony was jabbing at the keys, shoulders hunched and back tense.

Clint licked his lips and took a step off the cliff.

“So you know I kinda like pain.”

Tony curled even more protectively over the keyboard, but he stopped typing. He was listening. Clint’s mouth was dry and he swallowed hard, forcing his voice to remain stable.

“And, well… kid straying into that field, without a good guide… let’s just say my first – and only other – male relationship wasn’t all that great.” He didn’t count the one-night stands, because if he did, he’d be here a long time remembering the bad and really – really, he was trying to move past it, trying to talk objectively about a piece of him hidden away for so long because he didn’t think anyone could accept it about him. “So. I mean, I could control myself. I didn’t need it. Hell, sometimes bullet wounds could do it for me. Medical understood sometimes I just wouldn’t come to get patched up.” He stopped, sucked in a steadying breath. “So – so that’s why Natasha freaks when – when I have bruises. She kinda… showed me it didn’t have to be that way. That I could do other things to get what I needed.”

Which, okay, wasn’t one hundred percent true, it was more Natasha had looked so horrified, so terrified, that Clint had decided he could do other things to get that natural high. But Tony didn’t – okay, yeah, Tony _did_ need his whole sordid past, but not… not right now. Not when Clint was beginning to realize that, in his own way, Tony had thought Clint still needed to make up his mind and had been trying to give Clint the space he needed to do so. Moving away from the door, Clint came quietly up to Tony’s side and tentatively brushed fingers against Tony’s neck before he let out a sigh and rested his hand between Tony’s shoulder blades. “You—” Shaking his head, he muttered, “Okay, so, fuck, I’m not drunk enough for this discussion.”

“You and me both,” Tony replied back quietly, but some tension left his shoulders and he seemed less wound up. “What, um – what do I need to – to do to fix this? To – to make it okay?”

Tony’s voice cracked in the middle, and he was shaking, and Clint realized two scared and running men were never going to meet in the middle without some kind of consideration first. Laughing weakly, he sat down on the workbench next to Tony and rested his forehead against Tony’s neck, breathing in deep and reveling in the scent that had come to mean _safety_. “You were doing it,” he whispered, lips brushing over Tony’s skin. “You weren’t pushy. You made sure I was okay before you – before you fucked me. You talked about things before doing it. You called me nicknames and it was playful and fun with that edge of danger I like. Why did _you_ change all that?”

Realizing his voice had gone a bit plaintive and desperate, he closed his mouth and swallowed hard, closing his eyes tight and rubbing his nose in the junction of Tony’s neck and shoulder.

“I – was told that I needed to treat you better.” Tony paused, and Clint wondered who would have told him that – well, okay, a lot of the team would have told him that because they’d picked up on how nervous Clint was with physical displays of affection and interaction. “And that I needed to show I was serious, and stop treating – well, _everything_ – like a joke. So.” Tony breathed in deep, cleared his throat, and his hand came up to rest against Clint’s cheek. “I tried to be… serious.”

Clint tried to imagine Tony being serious, and then tried to apply ‘serious’ to the sessions they had in bed, the easy camaraderie he had wanted, and he began to snicker. All his emotions spun out into his chuckling until it was full-out laughs, and he was shaking Tony’s body with how badly he was laughing. “You?” he gasped, because maybe with Steve, or Thor, or Fury, or Natasha, Tony could be serious, but with Bruce? With Clint, who was the prankster who had started the prank war between them? “Serious?” he finally managed to get out.

“I can be serious if I have to be,” Tony replied, and his voice was twisted in on itself, self-loathing and bitter and broken.

Immediately, Clint sobered himself and breathed in deep. It wasn’t fair to laugh if Tony didn’t understand why he was laughing. Maybe, later, he could explain it and share it, but as for right now, he had to make Tony understand that he didn’t think Tony had taken this as a joke, that _Clint_ had taken Tony’s efforts as jokes. “I know, Tony,” he murmured, curling his fingers into the fabric of Tony’s shirt. “I know.”

They sat there, Tony apparently unwilling to be the one who spoke first, Clint just reveling in the fact that they weren’t breaking up – that not only were they _not_ breaking up but they were on the same page about where the relationship should go. And while Clint had heard all the old wisdom about how you don’t base a relationship on sex, you don’t trust the sex because the personality of your partner will be vastly different outside of the bedroom… it had been in the bedroom where Clint had learned to trust again. “You know the one thing you did absolutely perfect?” he asked, before he could lose his resolve to tell Tony. “The one thing that convinced me you could be the real deal?”

Tony tilted his head back, resting the side of his head against the top of Clint’s, and Clint fought to keep from nuzzling like a cat at the warmth. “What?” Tony asked quietly.

And this could be the worse answer to give, but it was true, and it was what had convinced Clint that Tony could be a caring and wonderful partner and had made Clint fall in love. “The sex.”

There was a pause long enough for Clint to grow terrified, worried that Tony had taken it the wrong way, but then Tony repeated, “The sex?” and Clint could hear the smugness in that voice.

Which was how, minutes later, Clint found himself stretched out on Tony’s bed, writhing as Tony let his fingers dance over Clint’s nipples, down Clint’s ribs.

“Put your hands up, beautiful,” Tony purred, mouth against Clint’s hip, and it was instinctive now for Clint to cross his wrists and stretch them over his head, gripping the headboard.

Tony’s weight rested on his chest, one knee on either side of Clint, Tony’s dick and balls hanging heavy against Clint’s neck, and there was the tell-tale click, the feel of cold steel around his wrists, the familiar feeling of helplessness that turned him on and spiraled him into fear at the same time. It wasn’t until Tony ran the tips of his fingers down Clint’s arms, tracing the line of muscle, and then gripping at Clint’s short hair that Clint could center himself in the here and now, not in the past.

“You with me, gorgeous?” Tony asked, and while the tone was teasing, his eyes were serious. Clint focused on those eyes, on seeing the adoration there, and he nodded.

“Okay then. I think you’ve been a bit of an asshole, don’t you?”

Clint blinked, the words jarring him out of the state he’d been in, and he tried to figure out what Tony was aiming at. “What—”

“Ah-ah! No need to speak,” Tony growled, and there was something predatory there, but also possessive, caring, concerned. Clint swallowed hard and made a conscious decision to surrender instead of argue like normal, to trust that this meant as much to Tony as it meant to Clint and therefore nothing really bad was going to happen.

Tony climbed off of Clint’s chest and dug under the bed. Clint could feel pre-cum ooze onto his belly in anticipation; only the really interesting toys were hidden under the bed.

He came back up with a crop and a one of the biggest dildos they owned. “I’m gonna work this into you, Clint,” he said, and his eyes were dark and wild and Clint squirmed on the bed at his gaze, “and then I’m gonna whip your ass and thighs raw so that every time you sit down for the next week, you remember that you’re mine and I want this as much as you do. You have something you need to tell me, you fucking tell me. Trust goes both ways. Am I clear?”

“Yessir,” Clint hissed out, breathless and unable to tear his eyes away from Tony’s bare chest, the arc reactor that lit up the matte black of the crop, the fake flesh of the dildo.

True to promise, Tony worked one, two, three, _four_ fingers into Clint’s ass, taking it so, so slow, and sometime between the third and the fourth Tony had put a cock ring on Clint, insistent on keeping Clint on the edge until Tony was ready to take him. Clint’s hands were flexing, his feet planted on the bed and ass thrusting down, greedy for more, wanting more, and Tony was hissing out filthy encouragements interspersed with crooning praise.

“So greedy, my little slut, only mine, and you’re no one else’s, good, oh, that’s so good sweetling, what if I put my whole fist in there, huh? What if I curled my thumb in and shoved in and rubbed knuckles over prostrate and your slick, slick walls, get you so loose and sloppy and dripping with lube, would you like that, gorgeous, would you love it, would you whine and beg and plead and scream—”

And Clint did all of those things, and more – he spread his legs wide, offered himself up as a sacrifice, whispered “ _please Tony, yes, anything, yours, yours only, I want it, I want everything of you, I want to feel you everywhere_ ” and keened when more of the lube is liberally squirted up his ass. It pooled beneath him, wet and slick and Tony was biting hickeys into his thighs, his free hand letting the tip of the crop dance over Clint’s cock and balls, and Clint shivered hard, imagining it, imagining what it would be like to be fucked out by Tony’s first and whipped with the crop and still be left begging for more, cock flushed because of the cock ring.

“Oh, beauty, my little hawk, you’re mine and you’re so fucking beautiful, you’re a work of art and I can’t believe how far up our asses our heads have been, but yours more than any, huh, sweetcheeks? Gonna split open that ass—”

And then Tony’s hand was a fist, all five fingers curling in and Clint lost everything, every scrap of dignity, shrieking his pleasure as the joint of Tony’s thumb slipped in and pressed firmly, right up against his prostrate, while Clint could _feel_ his hole close tight around Tony’s wrist, keeping Tony in place.

“Oh, baby, gorgeous, you’re so fucking gorgeous, look at you,” Tony breathed, and he licked at Clint’s hole, making Clint quiver and plea brokenly to be allowed to come. “Think you’re stretched wide enough, baby, and we gotta get this dildo in so I can double you over and whip your ass. That’s what you want, huh?” and then Tony’s teeth dug into the meat of Clint’s ass and Clint sobbed, unable to even open his eyes he was so twisted up with need.

Carefully, gently, Tony removed his hand and Clint was left feeling so empty, so open and loose, and he whined plaintively, whimpering. Tony pressed a kiss in the junction of Clint’s groin and thigh, bit down hard and Clint gasped.

It was at that moment that more lube was squirted in, and Tony’s hands were trembling with excitement as the dildo slid in far more easily than normal – which made sense, thinking about it objectively.

Which Clint couldn’t, at the moment. All he could feel was the thick fat column shoved in, ridges running on the inside of his belly and bowels and stroking over over-sensitized nerves and he cried out, gasping, ass automatically clenching around the flared base.

There came a mechanical click, and the dildo began to buzz.

Clint let out a wail even as there was a sharp sting of pain across his cheeks, shoving the dildo deeper in, and Clint shuddered, his dick dribbling out precum and spilling over his navel and groin, slicking his sorely neglected shaft. He was crying, broken sentences that begged Tony to show some mercy, to let him find some release, and Tony just sliced the crop over his inner thighs, over the sensitive skin of Clint’s hole, over the meat of Clint’s ass and the thickness of Clint’s thighs, and Clint was floating above everything, driving higher and higher and he didn’t even know what he was babbling anymore, didn’t know what was happening beyond the awful aching stretch that was just so goddamned good, the lines of pain that appeared and disappeared, the fast pace of Tony’s voice that alternated between harsh and soft, punishing and gentling, and then the dildo was pulled out and something less hard, less wide, but pulsing, throbbing, _alive_ , took its place and Clint didn’t have the strength to press back as aggressively as he wanted, but he clenched his ass, he whispered over and over his need, his desire, his _want_.

Tony’s belly and thighs were pressing against the welts, were engendering friction, heat, and Clint came down enough from the high to open his eyes to slits, to see Tony pumping between his legs, head thrown back, slick with sweat and arc reactor casting a light glow over Clint’s darkly flushed cock, lighting Clint’s pale thighs and he could see the edges of the welts. None of them strong enough to break skin, to leave real _marks_ , because that wasn’t what this was about. This was about establishing ownership, to know one another, instilling trust, and just then Tony’s head fell down and their eyes met.

“Mine,” Tony breathed, clear as anything, even though everything else was faded from Clint’s mind, everything else was muted, but this – this was crystal clear, ringing and soul-shattering, and all Clint could do was hook his legs together behind Tony’s waist, drag Tony closer.

Tony fell forward, leaning over the front of Clint’s body, hips thrusting almost punishingly, and one hand stroked over Clint’s cheek, Clint’s jaw, Clint’s hairline. “Mine,” Tony whispered against Clint’s mouth, spit-slick tongue sucking bruises to the underside of Clint’s jaw, and Clint tilted his head back, opened his legs a little wider, angled his hips to be more welcoming.

 _Yours_.

His climax was a little _anti_ -climactic at that point.

He laid there on the bed, thoroughly fucked out, chest spattered with his own come, lying in the pool of wetness caused by the excessive amount of lube mixed with Tony’s come, hands still stretched over his head even though Tony had removed the handcuffs.

“You’re beautiful, Clint.”

Tony’s voice was soft, reverent, and Clint managed to crack his eyes open. He was so tired, boneless with pleasure, and Tony arranged him. The manhandling itself was a turn-on, Tony wiping a warm wet cloth over Clint’s body, sliding a towel over the wet spot, applying a general antiseptic and numbing agent to Clint’s welts and asshole, wiping his ass like Clint was a baby and Clint…

Clint just felt _safe_.

When Tony finally put everything away, pulled the covers up over Clint, Clint twisted his body, curled in tight to Tony, rested his head above the arc reactor and heard the almost inaudible hum. Tony paused a moment before wrapping arms around Clint’s shoulders and throwing a leg over Clint’s hip.

“When I was twenty-five,” Clint whispered to the soft light underneath his cheek, “I met this guy…”

 

*

 

While Tony didn’t really go around rubbing his hands together and cackling evilly, there was still a telltale glint in his eye that told Clint that Tony was dreaming up a suitable prank to pull over Natasha for repeatedly terrifying him. Still, he was more than a little shocked and embarrassed when Tony took his arm at a charity ball and started dragging him to the dance floor.

“What the hell, Tony?” he growled under his breath. “I don’t want to dance with anyone!” Tony knew full well Clint hated being on display; as much as he hogged the spotlight in the Avengers tower, in public social situations he much preferred to blend into the shadows before his mouth got the team in trouble or his nervousness made him babble. Well, the two things could be the same, actually—

“Not even me?” Tony murmured in that dark tone that promised Clint a wealth of dirty things once they got back to the tower and Clint shivered under those eyes, willing to say yes to anything for—

Then what Tony said penetrated, and Clint took a mental step back. “You? You’re gonna dance with me… in front of all of these people?” Because, okay, yeah, he wasn’t shamed of being bi, but he certainly wasn’t prepared to be snubbed at this party because they were surrounded by old farts who would flip when this happened.

“Let’s show them how it’s done, whaddya say?” Tony coaxed, and Clint couldn’t bear to deny anything when Tony had that particular mix of pleading and smug command in his voice.

Still, he could put up a token effort, especially because he didn’t _like_ public displays of affection. “How do you know I can dance?” he asked, growing nervous with everyone’s eyes turning to focus on them.

“Don’t you even kid – I know you danced with the Queen of England once. I regularly hack SHIELD files, you know that.” Tony’s eyes were dancing, but his body language was tense. This meant a lot to him, and he really wanted Clint to do this.

What it meant to Tony was a little harder to understand. Why did Tony need this? What would this do, beyond embarrass the hell out of Clint? Clint didn’t mind private punishments, but if this was Tony trying to punish him in front of a crowd, well, last week’s talk was all for nothing and Clint would dump Tony’s ass immediately.

And how the _hell_ had Tony gotten into that part of Clint’s file?

Tony suddenly picked up the speed, whirling Clint around, and this was – this was strangely like the floating sensation he got from pain, everything else falling away and there was nothing but Tony, the places where Tony’s hands touched Clint’s body, the charged space between their faces as Tony stepped back and twisted and then he fucking _dipped_ Clint and held him there.

Before Clint could shake off the faint trance and object, Tony grinned widely. “Are we boyfriends, Clint?”

And that – that was so far out of left field that Clint reacted instinctively. “The fuck do you even have to ask?” he said, bewildered.

Then – then Tony pulled Clint up and curled one arm around Clint’s waist, aligning their groins, and Clint let out a half-muffled yelp; half-muffled, because Tony’s mouth was slanted over his own, tongue curling around the tip of Clint’s tongue, and Clint could do nothing else but relax and moan softly, his free hand skating up Tony’s back to curl at Tony’s neck and just hold on.

Tony pulled back, eyes blown wide and looking satisfied with himself. “Mine,” he murmured, and Clint shivered pleasantly under that possessive gaze. Maybe he wouldn’t mind being someone else’s, especially if it went both ways.

“Yours,” he agreed. “And you’re mine?”

“For as long as you’ll have me, babe.”

 

*

 

Fury nearly blew his lid, and Steve came up, red-faced, to apologize for warning Tony not to mess with Clint, as did Phil, and Thor. Clint would have been resentful that everyone seemed to think he needed watching over but—

It made him feel safe.

And that’s really all anyone wants from life, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> 9/4 AN: I apologize. I have corrected the wrong elements in the story that I could - there should be another chapter posted as soon as I can find the time to write it, explaining things from Clint's POV.


End file.
